Challenge
Community resilience and vitality
Solution
Community hubs
More than 15 years ago, United Way Greater Toronto saw the need to champion access to public spaces and essential community services. We established and continue to fund an incredible one-stop model bringing all of that under one roof in eight community hubs in neighbourhoods across Toronto. Since opening their doors, those hubs have amassed 5.1 million visits — more than half a million last year alone. Gathering places for neighbourhood residents, they are also spaces to organize for community solutions — from acting as vaccination and testing sites as well as food depots during the pandemic, to corralling a groundswell of response to the needs of new and successive groups of refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine, most recently at the Bathurst Finch Hub.
We are welcoming new hubs in both Thorncliffe Park and Bridletowne — an investment for the ages. And we’re supporting existing hubs through transitions caused by redevelopment. That was the case in Victoria Park. There, we worked with the City of Toronto and agencies at the Inclusive Local Economic Opportunity table to not only save the hub but to expand it so that it’s ready to meet the evolving needs of the neighbourhood for years to come. Akin to this work is the creation of an Indigenous Healing Lodge, where individuals can receive cultural and clinical support in a therapeutic environment honouring traditions and respecting gender and two-spirit needs. United Way is supporting this initiative of the Indigenous Partnership Council (IPC), with $1.5 million in funding dedicated to IPC-identified systems-change priorities.
