Pelham Park Gardens

1. Pelham Park Gardens Domestic Outreach in Toronto

2. AGENDA • The Place • What’s happened so far • 2Q05 Initial vision • 3Q05 Basketball tournament • 4Q05 Christmas dinner • 1Q06 Attempt at breakfast club • 3Q06 Neighbourhood BBQ • The vision for the future

3. Pelham Park Gardens This is a government-subsidized housing project. It was built 40 years ago and has 455 units split between a 17 storey apartment building and a few rows of townhouses. Originally it was built for seniors and some are still living there but in the 1980s it was opened up to anyone needing government housing. The people living here are low-income families, many of them single-parent usually led by women. It is multi-cultural with a lot of Carribeans, and Hispanics and other cultures as well. A lot of them are in poverty cycles perpetuated by substance abuse and sexual abuse.

4. Name: Cindy LaPage Age: 33 Years Old Lived in Pelham Park for 26 Years Cindy lives in Pelham Park with her daughter Keisha who is 7 years old. Cindy has worked for Mega-City Self Storage for 3 years on and off. Cindy is part of the Women’s Group, Reading Circle, and The Pelham Park Renewal Committee. The reading Circle consists of teaching children afterschool how to read, and help with homework. Cindy was one of the Ladies that organized the “Festive Dinner” which we supported. Keisha came to live with Cindy three years ago from the Childrens Aid Society. Keisha was sexually and physically abused by mother and mothers boyfriend. She is also Cindy’s first cousin. Cindy is a single parent who finds it difficult to make ends meet. She receives O.D.S.P as her primary source of income. When asked to describe Pelham Park in her own words, she answered “family oriented community. Single parent families with many, many children. Three families have 10 children. A safe community compared to other housing projects. Although there is a lot of drugs going around. Lots of bullying other children, but it all starts from within the home. If you’re not taught at home you will not know how to act or react.” She said that if there was something that she would like to see changed in Pelham Park it was “the communication between the building and the townhouse tenants.” She plans on running for President of the Pelham Park Tenants Association that represents all the tenants.

5. Name: Terry LaPage. Age: 24 years Lived in Pelham Park for 24 years Terry goes by the nickname “Skrailly”. He lives in Pelham Park with his Mom, Dad, and two sisters. He finished high school when he was 21. He describes Pelham Park as “a complex that doesn’t have no work for no people. A nice place that doesn’t have any trouble, the only trouble there is the cops harassing the teenagers. There used to be a lot more work for the teenagers to do, but now it’s all gone. There’s no work. You live in Pelham, you have no work.” He works part time for the City of Toronto as a crossing guard. His salary on bi-weekly basis is $398.00. If he had an opportunity to work somewhere he would work at the ACC (Air Canada Centre). When asked what he would like to see changed in Pelham Park his response was “clean-up the place, make sure people throw their litter in the garbage, more stuff to do for the teenagers, and get the cops to stop harassing the teenagers”

6. Name: Raymond Manohar. Age: 18 years Lived in Pelham Park for 12 years Raymond goes by the nickname “Pizza man”. He lives in Pelham Park with his Mom, Dad, and three brothers. He just recently dropped out of high school. He smokes weed on a daily basis. “Weed don’t do nothing to you” His reason for dropping out was because he got kicked out for two years in a row and this year he realizes “school is not for him cause, he knows he’s not gonna pass” His last grade was 9. In describing Pelham Park he says ”It’s a good neighbourhood and a bad neighbourhood. It’s good because the people in Pelham try to look out for each other. And the people that don’t live in this neighbourhood try and come in to this area and run it. The police harass us and illegally search us for drugs when we don’t got any. They try to beat us up nuff times. People from the neighbourhood say the Pelham kids are bad and they know nothing bout us”. When asked what kind of people live in Pelham Park he answered “multicultural, and the people in the building are losing their minds”. Asked what he would like to see changed in Pelham Park he responded with “we need a permanent ball court, and a proper play ground with swings and stuff ”.

7. Initial Vision A brother has his place of business across the street from Pelham Park and has developed a burden for these lost people. Since the summer of 2005, a group of brothers committed to get together to pray and plan on how to help these people.

8. Basketball Tournament – September 2005 To break the ice, a basketball tournament was organized complete with trophies, BBQ, and separate younger and older leagues.

9. Christmas Dinner 2005 The women’s group of the apartment wanted to organize a Christmas Dinner for the project. Since we wanted to eventually run a breakfast club to feed the children before going to school, we volunteered to help out, in order to gain experience and exposure. Volunteers worked all day preparing the food.

10. Volunteers for both Richmond hill and Weston road contributed Approximately 250 were served from the apartment and town house complex

11. There was an assortment of foods served from turkeys to jerk chicken

13. And many showed up in the evening to help serve it and mingle with the guests

15. Breakfast Club After the festive dinner in December in 2005 we wanted to start a breakfast meeting in the middle of January in 2006. However, we were told by government housing that construction to renovate the building was going to commence shortly and therefore we would have to put on hold any sort of community work. Meanwhile, a few of us felt that since we prayed and sang gospel songs at the festive dinner we were being prevented to start the breakfast club. Some of the government housing employees said “ we are not all Christian here “ and therefore we didn’t think that the renovation (renovation started in June 06 ) was the real reason for us not to continue but because we were “overly Christian”. We then decided through prayer that it was best for us to wait on God’s leading and for God to initiate the work and for us to join him in HIS work.

16. July 2006 Community Barbeque at mega city for Pelham Park residents Over 250 hamburger and hotdogs were served Including a bake sale, face painting and helium balloons for all to enjoy

17. Future Endevours First and foremost we would like to wait on the Lord for His guidance and direction because “Except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it”. Since the barbeque we have had some inquiries as to having a Bible study and so we got together the following day on Sunday evening and we had a small group discussion on Genesis 3. We discussed the fall of mankind and God’s gracious dealing with man despite his open rebellion against his maker. If God wills it, we would like to focus on personal Bible studies and one on one contact with the individuals of Pelham Park. Our prayer is that eventually many will come to know Jesus Christ as their Saviour.

18. Sunday Bible Studies We have been meeting every Sunday at 5 pm. Initially with adults but now more with the younger group Ages range from 3 to Grade 10 Using a finished room in Mega City Storage. Need more volunteers to split up into age appropriate groups.

19. Are you your brothers keeper? Some brothers have taken a personal interest in individual boys and making a personal impact in their lives. There is a huge vacuum of male role models in this place and you could make a tremendous difference for eternity