Windsor Star article published on June 27, 2019
By Jennifer La Grassa,Windsor Star
More than half a million dollars was given to several organizations across Windsor-Essex Thursday, from the Downtown Mission to the Residence for Young Men.
The grants were awarded to support oral and mental health care programs that help vulnerable or marginalized groups.
The WindsorEssex Community Foundation awarded eight local charities a total of $580,587 from Green Shield Canada’s Six 4 Six Community Granting Initiative — $50,000 of which was from the Honey Family Foundation — on Thursday morning. There were 15 total applicants, and about half received grants that ranged from $26,000 to $165,000.
For the first time ever, they’ll offer these services to female or self-identified male youth. Weinberg said they anticipate 80 youth between the ages of 16 to 24 will join the program.
Green Shield Canada, a national non-profit health and dental benefit provider, gave $6 million dollars to fund local programs in six cities across Canada: Windsor-Essex, Hamilton, Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, and Northern Ontario.
The full list of recipients, their grant totals and anticipated projects are as follows:
- The Canadian Mental Health Association Windsor-Essex County Branch: $25,000. This will support their Building a more Mentally Healthy Community project that aims to deliver mental health education, training and awareness to at-risk populations and caregivers.
- Windsor Residence for Young Men: $26,186. The Youth Independence program will use this grant to deliver guidance and skills training to aid in youth resiliency.
- The Windsor Family Health Team: $40,880. The One Team Recovery project will use the grant to increase access to outpatient services for individual families affected by substance use.
- South Essex Community Council: $40,920. The grant will support their Building Routes to Mental Wellness project that educates service providers, employers, immigrants and temporary foreign workers on early signs of mental health issues and resources for intervention. These materials will be provided in English, Arabic, Spanish and German.
- Life After Fifty: $56,600. With this money, Life After Fifty will launch a one year Social Prescription pilot project that will prescribe physical and social activity to socially isolated seniors in order to improve their mental health.
- Family Services Windsor-Essex: $61,000. This will support 1,060 hours of direct clinical intervention, training in psychological first aid and other wellness materials to the Mental Health & Wellbeing for Newcomers project for Windsor-Essex newcomers.
- The United Church Downtown Mission Windsor: $165,000. This grant allows the Oral Health for All project to go mobile, providing dental services to people in the county that don’t have easy or affordable access.
- The Multicultural Council of Windsor & Essex: $165,000. The grant will go towards their three-year Oral Health Navigator Project that hopes to provide education and health promotion opportunities to 600 newcomers and immigrants. Individuals and families will be connected to health resources in the community and educated on making healthy decisions.