Thanks, Josh.
BGC Dawson is a community organization that has recently celebrated its 60th anniversary and serves over 800 families in the Montreal area.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought on some unique challenges for our community. Food security is one of our core programs. Pre-pandemic, we were serving 40 to 50 individuals per week through our food bank. At the height of the pandemic, this number skyrocketed to 941 people per month. While we are extremely grateful and thankful for the emergency community support fund, which enabled us to meet this need temporarily, we have more requests for food than we have resources. We had to make the difficult decision to scale back our food bank and are now serving just over 400 individuals each month, but the demand remains.
Summer camp, one of our key revenue-generating programs, was moved to a virtual format last summer and was offered free of charge. This significantly impacted our ability to meet our 2020 budget.
On top of that, our building is in desperate need of repair. This year, we invested over $100,000 in building maintenance and still have to plan to replace a leaking roof and an original furnace in order to be able to keep our doors open.
Our club, like others across Canada, had to make the difficult decision to lay off some staff and reduce program offerings. Approximately 70% of our staff nationwide are women, and we know that the services we provide allow mothers who so choose to enter and stay in the workforce.
Looking forward, we are committed to being there for our community and want to be in a strong position to adapt our programs to meet new realities. An article in the Financial Post on April 8 found that “the number of Canadians close to insolvency reached a five-year high”, with 53% of those polled saying that “they are $200 or less away from not being able to meet their bills and debt payments each month”.
We know that a lot of the families we serve are struggling financially and are just barely hanging on. As we move through this pandemic, organizations like ours need to be able to offer vital programs and services to all who need them, as part of our commitment to long-term community care.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.