Eastview Neighbourhood Community Centre

Toronto, ON

More than 40 years ago, a group of people in Eastview—a small Toronto, Ontario, neighborhood—created a multi-service centre to improve residents’ quality of life. Managed completely by volunteers, the Eastview Neighbourhood Community Centre helps children, older adults and newcomers. Its volunteers also organize food banks and baking programs. They dedicate numerous hours to carrying out the centre’s mission of fostering individual and community well-being, building leaders, and creating opportunities for the community. This year, the ENCC—thanks to a 4imprint® one by one® grant—received logoed vests to help ensure sanitary food distribution and identify hardworking volunteers. Fiona Devine, volunteer coordinator and fundraising manager at the ENCC, became aware of the need for food-protection bibs for volunteers working at the food bank. She requested volunteer logoed vests through the one by one® grant to help protect volunteers and recipients at the food bank—and to create visibility for their organization. “The bibs are a great way to spread the word about us,” Devine said. “When our volunteers go into the community to serve meals to more than 160 people per week, people are wondering who we are if they don’t know us.” With over 10,000 community interactions every year, the volunteers give more than 600 hours of their own time. Being able to offer them a branded volunteer vest was a small way to say thank you. “The bibs are very practical and look great. Volunteers are such an important part of our community. Them wearing the vests is a great way to motivate people in the community to join us and volunteer. We couldn’t have hoped for a better advertising item for our Eastview ambassador program!” And, the Basic Poplin Vest served an even greater need during the pandemic: Volunteers continued to deliver food to people in need, delivering more meals than ever before. “The volunteer vests are great to respect the COVID-19 safety measures. We collect them all every day, wash them, sanitize them, and they are ready to be used the next day,” Devine said.

For more information about Eastview Neighbourhood Community Centre, please visit https://eastviewcentre.com/ opens in new window