2 minute read
The Elizabeth Fry Society Services are Designated “Essential
Sam Kolodziejska
Each of us has experienced the isolation and loneliness that the Coronavirus lockdown has brought.
For many of us it has been the most traumatic experience of our lives. Women and children experiencing violence were at their most vulnerable. The women faced hard choices about how to flee danger at a time when almost nothing was open and there was little to turn to for help.
The Elizabeth Fry Society knew it could not close its doors. By the end of March, we expanded our shelters into rented hotel rooms and we mobilized cooking and delivered food. In the course of 2 weeks, we tripled the number of women and children we were serving in a new program called Hotels-to-Homes.
Despite COVID, infants and moms continue to enter EFry’s Cradle program for those affected by substance use.
Today, even as the daily numbers for those affected by COVID are increasing, people’s mobility is still limited and calls for help are rising, EFry continues its dedication. The last 6 months have seen us change the way we work, almost overnight. While many help-organizations closed or shifted to remote service due to the pandemic, the demand for EFry’s emergency support grew to unprecedented levels.
Each of our doors remained open and we opened more. Our services provided welfare administration, detox and addiction treatment, homeless shelters, and domestic violence counselling. All our services were designated essential services by the Province.
Food was delivered daily for those sheltered in hotels.
We are proud of our 80-year legacy of meeting the needs of our most vulnerable, even when physical distancing makes it tougher . . . it can be hard to comfort a child without being able to give a soothing hug or help a woman find housing, but we have found new ways to continue to support the elderly, the immunocompromised, and homeless women and their families.
Because we are a more mature agency with long-term experience in the community, we have the resilience and fortitude to seek new methods of responding to the crisis through the Government of Canada emergency response funds and donations to help keep women and children safe, and bridge more of them into homes of their own, free from violence and addictions and out of homelessness.
Wherever the pandemic leads us, we will carry on by being kind, calm, and safe, while we help others to do the same.
At EFry, we believe everyone can become a contributing member of society. By supporting a donation or making a planned gift through your Will, you are making a commitment to improving the lives of women and girls affected by poverty. Your support can help turn hope into a better tomorrow. s Sam Kolodziejska is a community educator with the Elizabeth Fry Society.
