Photo: Kerr Street Mission
Kerr Street Mission's annual fundraising golf tournament will take place this Monday, September 28, 2020 at Piper's Heath Golf Club. But there's also an online auction that's part of the fundraiser - and everyone can participate!
For more than 20 years, Kerr Street Mission (KSM) has been providing essential programs and services for families and their children. We've become a gathering place and hub of care for the community offering much needed programs like community meals, food market, after school care, youth programs and many more. Whether it’s a warm meal, connections to community services or a listening ear, KSM has always been there to help.
Kerr Street Mission is thankful to be entering the last four months of the year in a healthy financial position. However, it is not without concern. Several grants that supported important programming have ended and several funding commitments have changed as a result of COVID. So, we are focusing on our next fundraising activities to ensure we can continue to provide for all who need us.
The KSM annual Golf Tournament is upcoming on September 28th at Pipers Heath Golf Club. We are looking forward to a great day of golf and giving back! This tournament is one that brings in much needed fundraising dollars that help support our programs - so it is a very important event for us.
This year, our golf tournament will operate in a modified fashion, and as a result our auction will now be online. Since it will be a virtual auction - we wanted to share it with all of our donors and supporters in case more would like to participate.
During the pandemic, we have remained open and have been committed to serving all those in need. Most of our programs had to be paused due to the group size restrictions mandated by the Provincial government. However, we continued to run our food market, as it was considered an essential service that many families depend on. Since the pandemic was declared and lockdowns began the need for food has grown significantly. We are now serving 50% more individuals than last year at the same time.
We were also able to run a modified version of our summer programming this year. It was important for us to be able to run our Summer Camps not only for the families we serve, but also to our summer staff.
A great deal of time and effort went into planning a modified camp structure that kept the children and youth engaged while adhering to health and safety protocols. We are happy to report that our campers, youth and staff had a truly memorable camp experience full of arts and crafts, outdoor sports, fun activities and meaningful relationships.
We are grateful for the outpouring of support from the community. Many people have volunteered time to help with food distribution or to prepare a ‘take-out’ meal, and others have organized neighbourhood food drives. Many of our existing donors made contributions to ensure we could respond to anyone who came seeking help.
We also received donations from 312 new donors and we had 73 donors commit to a recurring gift. KSM also benefited from emergency COVID funding received through the Oakville Community Foundation, Feed Ontario/Food Banks Canada, and United Way Hamilton and Halton. The support has been remarkable. We feel very blessed!
You can see the auction items online at https://www.32auctions.com/KSMGolfTournament. The auction will be open until Tuesday, September 29, 2020 at 6:00 p.m. EDT. Thank you for your continued support!
