Project Hope is a grassroots initiative to support people experiencing homelessness here in London, Ontario. We are guided by our firm belief that everyone has worth, everyone deserves dignity, and no one should fall through the cracks. Politicians will describe homelessness and insecure housing as complicated issues, but we believe that every single person deserves to be fed, clothed, and warm. We are working towards a future in which everyone has a safe place to call home. Until then, we believe there are always many ways—both big and small—to help.

Every Tuesday night, our small collection of volunteers conduct outreach for approximately 150 people. We start by offering a hot meal and baked goods. Every week, our hard-working team of volunteers prepare a ton of delicious, nutritious, and protein-full food: sandwiches, chilis, muffins, cookies, and granola bars. We also participate in a broader initiative called “food rescuing”—we try to divert food that is near-expiry from the landfill and turn it into yummy meals. Then, we offer other essentials: toiletries, clothing, boxers, socks, and—since it’s winter—coats, gloves, scarves, hats, and blankets.

A lot of work happens downtown at our storage unit at City Centre Storage at 203 Bathurst Street. Every week, we take careful inventory of what we have and what we still need to serve our friends. We create a list of needed donations ranked according to priority and disseminate this across all of our social media pages. Then, every Saturday between 12:00-2:30, volunteers arrive at the storage unit to receive and organize these donations from community members. We know that many people do not have vehicles or have scheduling conflicts, so we also have a team of volunteers located across the city who collect donations throughout the week from porches and entrances. These same volunteers also offer their own residences as drop off locations. Since we are spread across the city, we can easily connect community members with a volunteer who lives in their neighbourhood. We also accept financial contributions from people who want to help in other ways.

In short, despite the many wonderful services and community programs available in our city, there are still many gaps in the social service sector. We try to fill these gaps by targeting people who may be left behind by other programs. We are all people first. Everyone deserves non-judgmental compassion. We call ourselves Project Hope because we believe in the power of hope. At the end of the day, we want the most vulnerable members of community to know that there are people out there who care for them. We hope this provides some hope.

If you are able to help spread some hope, please join us! You can find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Our website is projecthopelondon.wixsite.com/projecthope