Latest news with #Interfaith
Global News
23-05-2025
- Business
- Global News
Lethbridge food banks adapting to uncertain Canada Post future
As a potential second Canada Post strike in less than a year looms closer, some people are turning away from the mail carriers. 'We have started to do a lot more of our bill payments, as much as we can, via e-transfers and that sort of thing,' said Valerie Lazicki, executive director of the Lethbridge Food Bank. She says the strike in December was especially difficult for non-profits in Lethbridge. 'That time of year is the big donation spur from community members, so it was troublesome. There were cheques that were stuck in the mail.' Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy The other major food bank in Lethbridge, the Interfaith, said they were equally concerned at first, but found the mail service wasn't as necessary as they thought. 'While it did delay donations, we found that a lot of our donors adapted and found other means to give, primarily online, or people would come into the building to give us the cash right here on site,' said Danielle McIntyre, executive director of the Interfaith Food Bank. Story continues below advertisement For her organization, this second strike comes during the largest summer fundraiser of the year, the annual 'bakeless bake sale.' The Interfaith is hoping to raise $40,000 and McIntyre says she expects those who want to donate will do so, with or without Canada Post. The same sentiment is echoed by Lazicki, who says once the transition is made, there is no reason to go back to paper mail. 'It's long-term. Once we switch over our suppliers to that form of payment, it's easier for them, it's easier for us.' McIntyre says everything from newsletters to bills will be moved to paperless methods, even as their summer campaigns kick into high gear. 'We will be adapting to ensure we can still communicate with our donors regardless of Canada Post's activities.'
BBC News
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Malvern well-dressers prepare for magical unveiling in May
A full moon, a spring hare and a mermaid are just a few of the bewitching sights that may soon spring up around Malvern to celebrate the water bubbling out of the spa town's in Malvern can be found everywhere, some high up in the hills and others in back gardens, and 60 are being decorated for the annual created by about 800 people - this year on the theme of fairy tale and folklore - often develop amid great secrecy, artist Phil Ironside said."Some people put extraordinary amounts of work into it and they want it to be a big reveal. It's a lot of fun," he added. Carly Tinkler, president of the Malvern Spa Association, said the most exciting moment was seeing decorations under said one of the most moving scenes in recent years was on the theme of design showed a boat carrying people that were transformed into doves flying away. This year's theme of storytelling and magic is inspired by Malvern's literary connections with JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and the English medieval dream poem Piers to tourism body Visit the Malverns, Tolkien acknowledged the Malvern hills had inspired landscapes in The Lord of the officers also said CS Lewis, as a boy, would have encountered Great Malvern's Victorian gas lamps - unusual for their rural lamp stands behind a fir tree, similar to the scene where, in the Chronicles of Narnia, a wardrobe becomes a doorway to a spellbound, wintry world. Since 2014, Julia Palmer-Price has decorated the Rosebank Garden Well, which was only recently discovered, because it was overgrown."All my life I have loved what you might call serendipitous acts of beauty," she said. "If you go to a festival, there are crazy people just doing things for the love of it. It's an act of service."She is part of Malvern's Interfaith group and it was during a service she stumbled on a myth about hares and the moon. In coming up with her design, she has become intrigued by the animals, which have long been associated with Easter final design, to be unveiled with her singing group, will remain a closely guarded secret until May. Sustainable materials Malvern's festival is different to the famous Derbyshire well-dressings, where springs are traditionally decorated with pictures created out of petals pressed into clay on water-soaked, wooden frames."It's a lot more free here," Mr Ironside are no rules for dressing Malvern's wells, apart from decorations must not be offensive or promote an have free artistic reign, but they are encouraged to use sustainable materials. The spa association has described how Malvern's Victorian heyday came when the town hosted water cures that became a local they went out of fashion, the town "went into a chrysalis", Ms Tinkler by Rose Garrard, who helped found the association, claimed the tradition of making offerings at Malvern's wells went back at least to the 12th and 13th organisation revived a tradition of celebrating the wells in the 1990s and the May Day well festival in its current form was established in 2001. Yarn bomber Sue Spencer is dressing Stocks Drinking Fountain for the third year running, inspired by a famously enchanted started work as soon as the theme was chosen in January, because her elements are handmade from said she loved the creativity of making the designs and that she got involved to honour nature, history and the her family, touring the wells each year has become a tradition. Mr Ironside, who coordinates the well-dressers, has taken part himself since 2000 and is dressing the Dingle year, the theme was trees, and he looked at the networks of roots and fungi connecting them. Another year, he recreated the solar system. "We do all sorts of crazy, mad things," he he includes a painting, but sometimes he just makes a decoration out of wicker. "Whatever skills you have, you use for your well-dressing," he said."You become obsessed with your well, it becomes your well and you get attached." Cheryl Britton and her husband Roger will be dressing a well once used by her great-great-grandfather Thomas Gardiner in the 19th Britton said the iron manhole cover over a woodland water source was "the least impressive well you can imagine", but in May, the trees will be populated with characters from trolls to ogres, and visitors will step into a fairy tale described the festival as great fun and "absolutely not serious".But he said: "Actually it makes people aware of the natural resource and the landscape, and that a place is everything - environment, history and people - and to celebrate that is really important."The big moment comes in just over two weeks when the festival opens on 3 May. Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Chicago Tribune
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Social workers in Aurora can feel the anxiety of the immigrant community: ‘The level of fear is heartbreaking'
It's hard for most of us to wrap our heads around the level of anxiety and fear that's hit so many immigrants in our communities. I've spoken to enough people who work with this population to know mistrust is running rampant since Donald Trump moved into the White House with a series of moves targeting this population One undocumented immigrant who has lived here decades and is fully integrated into the schools, churches and neighborhoods, says he now looks with suspicion on those once considered neighbors and even friends. Whether perceived or real, fear is a powerful emotion. And Aurora area social workers have also been feeling more stress as they try to keep up with headlines that change from day to day. 'It really hit me: I can't mess this up,' said Katie Arko, executive director of Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry. 'These people's lives depend on the pantry every week.' Since Trump's executive orders, she added, 'a tremendous amount of time' has been spent 'so we can be as prepared as possible,' which includes 'watching the numbers closely.' While visitors to the pantry have 'generally been holding steady,' Arko noted an uptick in Friday's newly-added curbside option, which allows clients to stay in their cars rather than go into the building. And there's been an even more significant rise in Interfaith's 'Pantry-to-go' program which provides home deliveries. At Marie Wilkinson Food Pantry in Aurora, Executive Director Annette Johnson points to a 13% increase in visitors, which she says is likely connected to the fact only a pick-up system is being used currently at the Highland Avenue headquarters. 'Our guests just feel safer in their cars,' she said. And in their homes. What has 'really caught us off guard,' Johnson said, are the swelled numbers at East Aurora High School's satellite pantry, particularly on Kids Day, when youngsters can pick up bags of groceries for their families every other Thursday. Two weeks ago, 'we had to turn kids away for the first time,' she said. But this week was even 'more remarkable,' she pointed out, with numbers jumping from 80 or so to more than 180. 'We tried to keep up but the kids kept coming,' Johnson said, which resulted in more staff coming to help students from the district's Transitions Program, who pack groceries in bags and unload and sort incoming donations. There's no question 'some are afraid to come out in public,' Arko agreed, noting that, after holding steady at 75 students served a week, Interfaith's satellite pantry at Jefferson Middle School took a sudden jump to about 100. 'The level of fear is heartbreaking. Their lives are difficult enough without making it more difficult,' she said. 'Imagine what this is doing to their mental health.' Eric Ward, executive director of Family Counseling Services, doesn't have to. 'Every Latino staff person for the last two weeks has been working with parents who are scared,' he told me. 'And that is taking away from our mission' of helping them 'navigate mental health challenges.' But Ward puts much of the blame on too many people 'listening to rumors from 10 different sources,' including social media and mainstream media that are agenda-driven. Ward says he's telling his staff to stay away from those rumors and innuendos, as well as the politics behind them. 'Clients are calling our staff asking if they should send their kids to school because ICE will take them out,' he said. 'I tell them that's not how it works. We are a nonprofit. Can you imagine the optics of breaking into a mental health agency and removing children? 'This is what rhetoric does to people who don't have the means to access truth. It stokes worry and fear.' Which is why, he added, 'the most important thing we can do is help them with a reality check.' That's what the office of state Rep. Barbara Hernandez, D-Aurora, has been working hard to do after a barrage of phone calls from terrified individuals. While things 'have calmed down' to a degree, anxiety and mistrust will continue to impact immigrant communities, she said. As well as those who help them. Arko says Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry is receiving weekly requests from churches and other nonprofits serving mostly Hispanic bases, seeking food for families afraid to go into public places, including pantries,. And so, 'we are working on formalizing a plan to do our best to help these families,' she said, while 'ensuring we are not taking away' from their regular visitors. 'We are just one tiny little corner of the world, and think about how much time we have spent making sure we can pivot if needed,' she said. 'Imagine all the other nonprofits and what they are doing.' Sometimes discouraged but always determined, Arko can't help but compare the current narrative shaping our country's storyline to a bad movie. 'Unfortunately, we can't walk out,' she said. 'Or ask for a refund.'
