Executive Director, Gerstein Crisis Centre
Topic: Mental Health Crisis:
A Community Based Approach
Host: Bert Steenburgh
PLEASE RESPOND NOW FOR Friday to admin@rotarytoronto.com
Diet Restrictions?
ARRIVE BY 11:40 AM FOR CHECK IN
- Come at this time or earlier for fellowship with fellow Rotarians.
MEETING: 12:00 - 1:15 pm
Susan Davis is the Executive Director at Gerstein Crisis Centre, a 24-hour Mental Health and Substance Use Crisis Centre in Toronto. She has over 30 years of experience in the community mental health field with many years in direct service as well as leadership. Susan actively engages in the development of innovative services, partnerships and systems that improve access to the supports people need and that recognize the impact of the social determinants of health on people’s overall well-being. She currently chairs the Downtown and Toronto Region Human Service and Justice Coordinating Committees and is a member of the Mental Health and Addiction Advisory Panel to the TPS Board. Susan is a Board Member at Working for Change, a social enterprise organization that provides employment opportunities for individuals living with mental health and substance use issues. She is committed to creating services and systems that consider the whole person, treat all people with respect and dignity and create opportunities for people living with mental health and substance use needs to maximize their well-being.
Reach out to Don Bell donaldgbell@gmail.com if you can help. Tax receipts are available.
St. Patrick's Day - some Irish in all of us!
St Patrick’s Day Parade:
Sunday, March 19th, starting at 11:30
Bloor & St. George - wear your best green!
We will be walking in the Parade for a second year. We have a few vehicles that our Club has donated and several Rotarians from across the District joining our crew. It’s a fun event to walk along Bloor and down Yonge.
Expect a party afterwards!
Sierra Leone - CanSerra Technical School
In January our club made a $40,000 donation for this project, $37,000 from our Foundation and $3,000 from International Service Committee who also raised $36,000 from other sources.
Bassie Kargbo came to Canada many years ago as a refugee but believes that education is the way to raise a country. This will be his 6th school on the property covering from pre-school to this new endeavour.
The walls going up
The funds have arrived and Bassie is there supervising day-to-day work. In ten days they have laid the foundation, cemented a floor, have the rebar set for the pillars and are starting on the walls. This is all hand labour and the community is totally involved. Some days they finish after dark. Those of us involved in sweat equity trips will recognize the building techniques. We are creating a slide show from the pictures Bassie sends us every day. Rotary dollars at work!
Can you Board a Student? 5 weeks starting March 25th
We have been contacted by Arturo Vargas who is a member of Rotary in the Puebla district of Mexico. Arturo was an inbound exchange student to Canada in 1984-85 and lived with the family of an outbound student to Clermont-Fd, France 1985-86. The son of one of his friends is coming to Toronto for five weeks beginning March 25th to complete a course at the RedStone Agency (Yonge & Eglinton). The young man (22), Paco, is a student of Urban and Environmental Design. He is seeking student accommodations.
Our Foundation President Rick Goldsmith and Club President Jayson Phelps approved the set up for a matching campaign for ShelterBox Canada - Türkiye Earthquake Disaster Relief Program.
Please click on the direct link below, should you so choose to contribute to this campaign.
And feel free to share the link with others that may be inquiring.
With continuing aftershocks up to 6.1 the need for tents is most important. So many building are unstable.
It should be noted that the situation in Syria is not sufficiently stable at this period in time to provide relief funding.
Because of the May date for the RI convention in Australia we have moved this event to June 9-11. Mark your calendars now for the best club gathering of the year. Details to follow for this can't-miss event.
Ask Me Anything, March 14, 2023
The Member Engagement Committee led by Bill Morari and Andy Wedderburn hosted another successful event welcoming new and prospective members. Previous events have resulted in our club's great growth.
Rotary Tech Talks
Lately we hear a lot about cyber attacks, resulting in data breaches
affecting well known companies. As we continue to leverage services from Google, Zoom, ClubRunner and others to collaborate, we as
Rotarians need to take steps to protect our own identity and data.
One very simple way to minimize this risk is to enable Two-Factor
Authentication (2FA) for our online Identities. This is supported
through text messaging, authenticator applications, or hardware
tokens.
Over the coming weeks, we will enable 2FA starting with our Google accounts. As we would like to keep this as seamless as
possible and provide a positive user experience, we are looking for
some early adopters.
If you are interested in helping with this (and
potentially winning a cool prize as a result), please reach out to Brent Thomas (brent.thomas@rotarytoronto.com).
The walls going up
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