Trellis Remains ‘Open’ Through COVID-19 Pandemic
Trellis was in the early stages of amalgamation when the COVID-19 pandemic started to ramp up in Calgary and across our country. Being an essential service with many housing programs that operate on a 24/7 schedule, the restriction caused fear amongst our teams whose immediate thought was “how will these restrictions impact the people we serve?” We’ve really had to be intentional about how we continue to serve the children, youth and families in all of our programs, not just our 24/7 programs.
Many team members have been working remotely since March of 2020, yet we never stopped serving the people in our programs. A few highlights of how our team has pivoted over the past nine months include:
1000 Voices and the North of McKnight Hub helped residents to access basic needs during lockdown
When The City of Calgary mandated the first city-wide lockdown in March, the Genesis Centre closed its doors. The centre, which serves as the North of McKnight Community Hub, supports 11 communities in the northeast quadrant of the city, and offers a range of recreational, health, cultural and social services for residents. Last year, approximately 2 million people visited the hub.
With layoffs and temporary closures of both northeast Calgary Food Bank depots, many residents faced the scary reality of empty pantries and dinner tables. For children and youth who relied on school lunches as one guaranteed meal of the day, school closures meant going to bed hungry. A couple weeks later, the Genesis Centre and its partners opened the parking lot to offer a free, drive-through food service with support from Trellis, the Salvation Army, Calgary Food Bank, Brown Bagging for Kids, Meals on Wheels and others. The service consisted of meals and food hampers, and was offered to whoever needed it, no questions asked. After hearing about the initiative, the Dashmesh Cultural Centre quickly joined in, coordinating volunteers to prepare, deliver, and serve hot meals to people as they waited for their food hampers. This initiative helped to support over 5,000 Calgarians in a time when they truly needed it.
Clothing Rack (1 Socially Distanced & 1 Virtual)
Back in August as we continued to navigate our ever-changing waters, our team hosted a two-day Back to School, Back to Work Clothing Rack to support youth and families as they transitioned to their new normal for September. Over the course of the two-day event, over 220 youth and their families were able to get connected to resources and services within Trellis’ entire continuum of supports. Youth and families from 16 different programs within Trellis visited us at the Genesis Centre, home to our 1000 Voices and Building Youth Connections programs.
During each 30-minute appointment, participants were able to shop for their needs, accompanied by a personal shopper to create an engaging experience. They chose from over 1600 new articles of clothing that were generously donation by our friends from Banana Republic. To complement the clothing appointment, our teams leveraged existing partnerships for additional resources based on resident feedback. Hygiene supplies and pantry items were donated through our partners from the United Way’s Community Hubs Initiative. Gift cards were provided to youth and families who attended to ensure that everyone who visited went home with something they could use.
The team had planned to host a second in-person event in December, however with new restrictions we were forced to move to a virtual Clothing Rack. The second event supported hundreds of youth and families with contactless delivery of clothing, hygiene items and other basic needs as we headed into a second lockdown.
Clubs offered virtual summer camps & virtual after-school programs
Typically, all of the Summer Camps and After School Programs offered at our five community Club locations happen in person. But this year the Clubs team acted fast and moved programming online to ensure children and youth had fun and educational activities to participate in every day even if it had to be virtual. We offered eight weeks of virtual summer camp and now months of virtual programs for after-school hours. Trellis is committed to supporting the children and youth in the communities we serve and enthusiastically took to virtual programing in order to do so.
ENMAX Emergency Relief Fund
Recognizing the anticipated need in our community, the generous team at ENMAX reached out in the early days of the pandemic, contributing $20,000 to Trellis for our teams to directly support the people in our programs with basic needs such as groceries, utilities bills, gas cards and anything that families needed to get through lockdown. This donation allowed us to support 102 households with $15,200 in grocery gift cards, $4,625 in utility bills and $600 in gas cards. Team members submitted referrals for the participants in their programs and came together to determine virtual solutions for getting people their gift cards and utility support they needed. We had other partners such as the Children’s Aid Society and the United Way of Calgary and Area step in with additional relief funding throughout the pandemic and we are so grateful for all of the partners who supported Trellis and the people in our programs during this challenging season!
Trellis teams came together to support our 24/7 programs
At Trellis we operate seven groups homes, one youth shelter and multiple other 24/7 programs that support vulnerable youth and families in our community. These programs are essential services in our city and could not shift to a virtual setting. Between the times spent cleaning, sorting PPE and making sure program participants are safe and healthy, frontline staff have put in hundreds of additional hours to make sure that we continue to operate at the highest standard and offer the people in our programs the care they need. Staff across our organization have been redeployed to different locations and programs time after time and continue to show up for each other and the youth and families we serve. We are so proud of and grateful for the frontline team members who have worked so hard over the past nine months.