A sure sign of summer at the Community Health Centres of Northumberland always includes Annual General Meeting planning, tending the community garden, and welcoming our summer student to the team!
I had the pleasure of connecting with our Summer Program Facilitator, Shanel Viau who will work alongside our Community Health Worker, Carolyn Rutherford to assist in the planning, development and facilitation of youth programs throughout the summer months. These programs run both at the CHCN (at our 99 Toronto Road location), and at several outreach locations throughout the County. The annual “Summer Kids Club” is held at two outreach locations, and our very successful “Plants to Plates” program is held here at the CHC in our training kitchen. My own children benefited from the “Home Alone” course when they were of the pre-teen age and so, I would encourage any parents or caregivers of youth to check out our calendar of events or monitor our social media and website for all the details.
We are also pleased to share that our Community Garden is growing – LITERALLY! We have successfully received a grant from Community Food Centres Canada that will allow us to not only expand the growing space of our garden, but to generate new and exciting ‘garden to table’ projects that will include educational components as well as provide products for our weekly Community Garden Market. Stay tuned for more details as the growing (and harvesting) season progresses!
I would be remiss in not highlighting the planning that is underway for our July 8th Annual General Meeting. This year is a special one, not in terms of celebratory years, but in the fact that we have recently engaged with Toronto based filmmaker, Catherine Rix (of CATRIX Media) to start the important journey of telling client stories. We have envisioned an opportunity to do this for many years, because we know that some of our clients have important messages, and impactful stories of triumph over adversity. We have fortunately found a creative outlet to showcase some of these stories, and hopefully more in years to come. I encourage you to attend this year’s Annual General Meeting and witness a creative showcase of bravery and story telling on film. Should you wish to attend, please email Jill Williams at [email protected]. In typical movie fashion, we will be serving popcorn!
Finally, I am very pleased to share that the CHCN 2024 – 2027 Strategic Plan has been formally approved at the Board level and is currently being operationalized by staff. Our key areas of focus for the coming years include Health Equity, protection of our digital health assets, fundraising and communications efforts, amongst others. We will be publicly releasing our Strategic Plan soon and looking forward to engaging with the community to glean feedback and support in the exciting work ahead.
Wishing you a safe and healthy summer!
Sincerely,
Taryn Rennicks
Executive Director
