Tag Archives: Volunteers

Day 15 – Reaching out to other Toronto Haitian Volunteers

Our cooperative has just turned two weeks old, and we got brand new clothes to celebrate the occasion. As you can see, our team of dedicated designers have unveiled new branding for Toronto Works For Haiti. Huge thanks to our favourite uncles for giving us a new set of clothes! The uncles’ labour of love, the new head banner tells a lot about us – please take a moment to look at it.

We’d like to highlight a book that Elliot has been reading to help him lead Toronto Works For Haiti. In Change by Design, Tim Brown, CEO and President of IDEO, shares a few tips on how to curate the emotional ride of nurturing new projects based on his experience with his own design firm. Have a look at the graph below. Certainly during the first week of TW4H, we were charged with mountain-high hope. Then, came the second week where we were in the negative yet insightful stage.

Credit: Tim Brown

It’s important that we go on to the next, confidence stage and do not become stagnant. To do this, we should turn to the insights that have been picked up along the way, and improve our processes so as to better serve our clients and manage service offers. We’re doing this to ultimately help the people in Haiti to rebuild their community.

We’d also like to build our own community here in Toronto. We believe that together with other local volunteer groups, we can offer much better assistance to the people in Haiti. HaiHaiTO is holding their fundraising event on February 11, and Toronto Help Haiti!’s One Love For Haiti is happening on February 6. These are just some of the events that will send out messages of encouragement to those who survived the ordeal. Thinking about what we have been and will be doing as a community here in Toronto makes us feel hopeful.

More good news on the business front to share with you. We were approached by a local artist who would like to donate his artwork for Toronto Works For Haiti. We will post the images of his artwork on our site later this week for all to see. And of course, we are pleased with the RSVPs for tomorrow’s event. It will be an amazing gathering for sure. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Day 14 – Accounting Services, Art Direction, Personal Coaching Services Added

It’s cold in Toronto but it’s hovering around 30C in Port-au-Prince, and sunny. What this means is that the weather’s right for getting work done, both here and in Haiti. Looking at the week ahead, we have our work cut out for us.

Today, we have Francois Phaboriboun on board, offering accounting and bookkeeping services. We have also updated Kim and Jennifer‘s Personal Coaching Services and a local art director on our service offering page. So let’s make our focus for this upcoming week the matching of volunteers to volunteer seekers. We are definitely continuing to encourage our friends and co-workers to check out the blog and sign up. But our special task this week is to see how many links we can make between the services provided and services required. If you spot a potential connection, please email us and let us know!

It’s been two weeks since the earthquake, and instead of just reporting about what’s happening in Haiti now, a lot of the weekend newspapers have asked reporters and commentators to make their remarks and suggestions for what they see as things that need to be done to help Haitians deal not only with the immediate aftermath, but also to help build a better and stronger Haiti.

Day 7 – We Need More Volunteers

Note: We have moved our website to www.TorontoWorksForHaiti.com

Looking ahead to this week, the situation in Haiti seems to have gone from rescue effort to salvage effort. Food, water, shelter and illness are things that the Haitians have to contend with now. This story in the New York Times describes the situation of the survivors, who are trying to return their lives to order, but find that they cannot do so when they have so little left to return to.

Needless to say, there’s lots that needs to be done in Haiti.

We’ve been busy, too – we’ve posted the Volunteer Form for potential volunteers to complete. While we have a great group of volunteers who are offering a broad range of services, we still need more people to get involved! We’re hoping to match up more volunteers with more clients who want to donate. So when you’re talking to your coworkers around the water cooler on Monday, remember to tell them about Toronto Works For Haiti and ask them to check out this blog.

Have a good week, everyone, and let’s keep it up.