Boyle Street Community Services is taking the month of October as a Month of Thanks. We’ll be highlighting partners whose advocacy and support have been instrumental to our success this year.
This week’s post is a little different. Instead of one partner organization, we have three individual supporters that found innovative ways to support us this year. They may have done it on their own, but they made an impact on their community along the way.
Jeannie
You might remember from the summer when talented Jeannie, a six-year-old Edmontonian, hosted her own art gallery in her parents’ backyard. Since the start of the pandemic, Jeannie spent as much time as she could creating works of art. But it wasn’t just an opportunity to
show off her skills:
“Naturally, I want to make her dreams come true, but it's also a great opportunity to teach her to give back," said Pamela, Jeannie’s mom.
Together, Jeannie and her parents decided that funds raised from selling any art at her art show would be donated to support us and our programs. The best part? Jeannie sold all of her art! The next best part? She raised over $1,000 for our community.
We felt so incredibly honoured that Jeannie would use her talents to support the people we serve, and we wanted to highlight her efforts to show that hosting a fundraiser has no limits on age or form. Jeannie is an inspiration to do-gooders both young and old who want to get involved in their community.
Mitchell
Mitchell, an artist from Toronto, was commissioned by the Edmonton Art Council to work on a project that takes a holistic view of Edmonton’s Chinatown. He came to Edmonton expecting to just fulfil his commission, but soon he became a part of something much larger. As part of his project, we talked with many of our community members.
Making his way to our Community Centre, he spent hours in the drop-in centre just taking in the stories of the community members and their experiences.
His initial project isn’t finished yet, but Mitchell was impressed with the importance of the work that we do at Boyle Street. He had a lot of honest and direct conversations about building partnerships with Boyle Street and the work that we do. Mitchell decided to designate Boyle Street as the agency of choice when selling his art in his online store and he raised a substantial amount of money that goes a long way towards helping our programs. Portions of his contribution are going to Sakihta Kikinaw, making a meaningful contribution to ID Services, and creating a matching campaign for this holiday season.