The annual Coldest Night of the Year fundraising event is scheduled to take place on Saturday, February 28, beginning at 4 p.m., with participants gathering at the Rotary thrift shop on Trowbridge Street.
The walk aims to raise funds and awareness to help support people experiencing homelessness in our community.
First launched in 2011 in Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo, the initiative caught on, and today, 15 years later, it is held in more than 170 communities across Canada.
Regionally, the United Way of Bruce and Grey organizes and promotes the annual walk, and their charity partner for the Meaford event is the Meaford Rotary Club.
Like many, during the frigid months of winter I often think about those who are struggling to keep warm on the streets. I can’t imagine the desperation for a warm spot to rest for a while, or the challenge of finding warm winter clothing without any cash to pay for it.
As we go about our daily lives in a small community like Meaford, it can be easy to forget that in our very own community there are folks who are struggling to pay the rent, or to buy some groceries. And some have found themselves in desperate situations after losing a job, and then an apartment, forcing them to survive as best they can by sleeping in their car, or on a friend’s sofa, or worse, huddled under a blanket in a park on a cold winter night.
It is always heartbreaking to know that folks are struggling, even in our own community. My heart aches when I hear of someone without a home, without resources for proper nutrition or other basic human necessities.
As I wrote on this page two years ago, the harsh reality is that most of us aren’t as far away from the prospect of homelessness as we might like to think. With the vast majority living paycheque to paycheque, with little to nothing set aside for emergencies, a significant number of us could find ourselves struggling and vulnerable on the streets after losing a job, or enduring a mental health crisis. The fear, the frustration, the feeling of abandonment, could knock on many of our doors in a virtual heartbeat.
I can’t pretend to know the reality of the struggles experienced by the unhoused, but I can certainly empathize, and I often remind myself that it could be me, or someone I know and care about, on the streets, searching for a place to sleep, dreaming of a proper meal, or a warmer jacket to help get through the chilly winter nights.
Often homelessness is the result of years of struggling to stay afloat in an increasingly expensive world, a world in which lower incomes have failed to keep pace with the actual cost of living, leaving people to make difficult choices between medications and food, or between keeping the car in order to be able to continue to get to work, or a roof over the head, with the car sometimes becoming that roof.
The most vulnerable among us are our friends and neighbours; they are mothers and fathers, and alienated youth, and they could be you, or me, or anyone else, given a couple of bad months, or as a result of a breakdown of mental health. Very few of us are immune from the many variables that could find us struggling to afford food, or without a home, desperately searching for somewhere safe to get through a chilly night.
As is noted on the Coldest Night of the Year’s website, the initiative is “a moment when tens of thousands of Canadians step outside the warmth and comfort of home and shine a light of welcome and inclusion.”
Last year, 85 Meaford folks – families, couples, seniors, and even Scarecrows walked the two to five kilometer route, and another 23 Meaford-area residents volunteered for the Coldest Night of the Year walk to raise funds for the most vulnerable in our community.
Organizers are hoping to reach their $20,000 fundraising goal as they did last year, and at the time I am writing this column on Tuesday morning, a week and a half before the walk, organizers have already raised $12,020, or 60 percent of their $20,000 goal.
If you are able, consider participating in the walk, and help to raise badly needed funds that will be used to help the most vulnerable in our community. If you can’t participate in the walk, consider pledging to someone who is taking part in the walk.
After the walk, participants will be treated to some hot soup, provided by The Dam Pub and Jake’s, warm drinks from Believer Coffee, cookies from The Kitchen, and buns from Godard’s Independent Grocer, served by Meaford Rotarians.
Check out the Coldest Night of the Year Meaford Facebook page for details:
https://www.facebook.com/cnoymeaford
Or visit their website: https://en.cnoy.org/location/meaford
