Niagara Folk Arts Multicultural Centre 85 Church Street, St. Catharines, Ontario L2R 3C7 Phone: 905-685-6589 | Fax: 905-685-8376 www.folk-arts.ca COVID-19 Response Niagara Folk Arts Multicultural Centre-First Week Our first week has passed since the COVID-19 has been declared a pandemic and in an effort to keep everyone informed, we will provide periodic updates about all of our actions at the Niagara Folk Arts Multicultural Centre, while also providing gratitude and reflections during these exceptional times. Our team at the Centre has been working tirelessly during these challenging times as safety takes precedence with the COVID-19 declared a national and provincial emergency. We continue to consult with funders, as we ‘alter health and hygiene measures and reorganize the centre’s activities while we work proactively to still meet our clients’ needs within our funders’ requirements while providing health and safety for staff, volunteers, partners, tenants, and the general public. A brief overview of this week (March 16-20) 1. We have conducted and reorganized most of our meetings for March and April and turned face to face meetings to virtual ones in an effort to keep our clients served, meet our target goals and still be health and safety conscious and quickly learned about the various technologies available for us and our partners and that was through the exemplary teamwork and collaboration of our 47 staff and various satellite locations. 2. We have shut down our satellite offices in Welland and Niagara Falls, and re-routed all staff to work safely from home while having access to the necessary IT and technology needs to continue business as usual thanks to our amazing administrative staff Marie Mouradikian and Aaron Moukperian. 3. We have suspended our volunteer program and we greatly miss our beloved volunteers, coop students and student placements and we will continue to 1 reroute and reorganize the workload around their roles into virtual roles where possible and also work closely with Niagara College and Brock University to maintain students’ placement standing during this outbreak. Special thanks to Jillien Hone, our volunteer coordinator for doing an outstanding job in communication to all stakeholders involved. 4. We have new plans in place for reorganizing our buildings’ disinfection and deep cleaning plans with our existing contract and utilizing our resources wisely and have plans in place for Robertson Hall, as well as the main building while efforts continue with the city for this years’ exciting and long awaited renovation plans, while keeping health and safety as our number one priority for all, and grateful for the leadership of Edmund Fry, our facilities coordinator. 5. The sense of isolation with our clients is imminent and we are planning extensively on prioritizing our most vulnerable clients first and keeping in touch with them regularly while increasing social supports as well as trying to access additional funding for culturally appropriate mental health supports for which the requests have gone up significantly and our wait list is getting longer than 2 weeks. Our biggest need at the moment is for newcomer mental health support and prioritizing for elderly newcomers who are isolated as well as vulnerable youth and women at risk of violence. However great these needs are, our leadership team with Josefina Perez, Rose Karborani and Zainab Awadh leading these will have rapid responses available for clients in no time. 6. We have re-routed all of our intakes to one line in our virtual Welcome Centre and e-mail address and our intake and assessment team are capturing all calls and requests as well as reaching out to our existing client database for the last 6 months in the coming weeks and prioritizing our calls and maintaining the merging of all data into our new OCMS database, thanks to the leadership of the Welcome Centre Coordinator, Zainab Awadh and to our settlement coordinator, Rose Karborani. 7. We have halted all of our ESL classes and will merge to virtual lessons after April 6 and Anna Belanger and her team will lead that transformation for us. 8. We have also stopped the Child Care Centre (CNC) until April 6, following the orders for our school board and the province, while Marion Campbell and her team is re-arranging lesson plans and work-plans for after the new realities after April 6 and we are looking forward to new plans. 2 9. We have and will continue to extensively utilize our website, e-communication and social media to reach out to the greater newcomer and ethnocultural communities with timely information and updates on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as creating online learning opportunities and service updates as they become available, through the leadership of our communications leads: Yusuf Al-Harazi and Pam Seabrook. 10. We participated in conference calls with our local municipality, regional as well as national stakeholders, local MP’s and MPP’s as well as industry experts to state our asks and support our advocacy efforts when it comes to immigrant inclusion. Our recently updated work from home policy has also been shared provincially as well as nationally and will contribute to best practice for the sector. 11. Daily business cycle virtual meetings with our leadership team took place this week, and the activation of the Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) with the daily updates is working really well. The input, leadership and support has been invaluable from staff as well as community stakeholders. 12. Today our staff has participated in our first online training through the leadership of our JSW team: Jackie Wakeling and Yennis Camargo, and we have all benefited from some professional development on supporting virtual learning for our clients through Contact North Online Services. 13. We also had our first virtual yoga session for our program leads and we will continue to have them on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays for 30 minutes to keep our spirits high. 14. Starting next Wednesday, we are expanding into virtual learning sessions with experts on select topics, along with a weekly virtual schedule to get a sense of the need from the local immigrant and ethnocultural communities and much more. Please stay tuned and keep following us on our social platforms on facebook, instagram, twitter and our website: www.folk-arts.ca 15. As all organizations are experiencing significant stress and anxiety, we have actively committed to sharing positive stories and created a gratitude challenge as well, with the leadership of our youth program and their dedicated staff. 16. We have upgraded our digital marketing efforts to teach Niagara’s newcomers on how to practice social distancing and judging by the responses and uptake, it has been well received. 3 17. We have polled our ethnocultural organizations and have collectively decided to postpone the Folk Arts Festival all together until later in 2020 or beyond and we have messaged this out to the public as well as to the association along with our funders, etc., thanks to the leadership of our Festival Producer, Pam Seabrook. 18. We have also halted all rentals to Robertson Hall and also notified all current tenants and rented commitments of the closure, through Marie and Edmund’s careful guidance and leadership. 19. We are also working on our administrative practices to ensure our staff are still paid and cheques are being signed and reconciled and businesses get paid, and procurement continues without major interruptions and our fiduciary obligations and responsibilities are fulfilled. Those or no small feats to achieve and our admin team does it without hesitation and with amazing spirit: thank you Lucia Stewart, Marie Mouradikian and Nancy Marchese. 20. We have postponed our next board meeting scheduled for March 23rd in an effort to staff focused on operations and mobilize our resources to first respond to client needs. We thank our board for their support and leadership during this extraordinary period. 21. Alternative plans and arrangements continue to happen in the background as we re-group and stand by to watch how this pandemic evolves and updates become available. Thank you also to every single staff person person who has been instrumental in quickly modifying the range of our centre’s activities — while minimizing adverse effects on thousands of newcomers and individuals with special needs and circumstances — is no simple matter, and yet I know our NFAMC team would say it has all been beyond a privilege to achieve these changes in support of our clients, volunteers, tenants, community partners and staff. These incredibly dedicated people have remained resilient, positive and focused on finding creative solutions that are safe, cost effective and practical and for adjusting activities, and ensuring the health and well-being of all members of the newcomer and ethnocultural communities. It is always a pleasure to work with such a great group of talented leaders who are first responders to all urgent requests and help our organization’s transition during these unlikely times. They have not hesitated to step up in an hour of need, and I am truly moved and inspired by their leadership and selflessness. There will be times when we will have better days, and in the meantime, hope the above provided a snapshot of a great team I am truly honoured to lead. 4 Be well everyone, be kind to yourself, to your loved ones and family and continue to show the world what a beacon we continue to be in Canada, in Ontario and in Niagara, -at the Niagara Folk Arts Multicultural Centre. _________________________________________________________________ Last Update: March 20, 2020 5
Enter the password to open this PDF file:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-