HomeComing

11/2/2018

If there's one thing that we do well at Redwood (Ok, we do lots of things well, but this one is the most important) it's community.

So when it was time to host a night to raise funds for our Hope through Housing capital campaign, we made it a community affair. Like a neighbourhood barbecue...if your neighbourhood is all of Barrie.

Photo Credit: Snapd Barrie

The Gift You Offer

5/9/2018

I honestly never thought I'd be here.

I'm an artist. A singer. A fiction writer. A stay-at-home mom. Once upon a time I was a teacher. But a "social worker"? I never would have guessed it.

I say that in quotes because I still don't really see what I do as social work. Or work, really. And that has taught me the most about the roles we play in life and those feelings of being unqualified or less-than.

Rainbows and Unicorns

4/11/2018

Not so long ago, I had an uncomfortable but necessary conflict with a friend. She pushed away my attempt to reconcile with her afterward, saying, "I guess my life just isn't all rainbows and unicorns."

I went away with mixed feelings. I felt like she was trying to get a dig in there, trying to tell me that I was out of touch and privileged. For one, my life definitely hasn't always been wonderful. I've had my own private struggles and hardships. But then I started thinking about rainbows and unicorns and I came up with some realizations.

The Family we Choose

3/14/2018

“Sometimes the family we make for ourselves is more important than the family we are given.”

Family has been the foundation of society for millennia, the source from which we draw our name, our security, our identity. Many of us can say “I don’t know what I’d do without my family.”

But what about those who have no family, whose family is unsupportive or, worse, actively sabotaging their lives?

Loose Threads

8/16/2017

Earlier this month I was sitting with two friends at the Redwood kitchen table, and one of them was crying. She'd had a hard time recently and, afraid to reach out, she had gone through it alone. Without help and emotional support, her situation had spiralled, and ended up being more frustrating than necessary. In hindsight, she'd admitted that it would have been better to reach out for help.

Why is it that we isolate when we're in trouble? Why do we close ourselves off and ignore the open hands around us?

Part of a Team

7/18/2017

Ever notice how hard things are easier with support? How impossible things become possible with a team?

This will be my third consecutive year as a member of the Redwood Paddlers Dragon Boat team. Now competition is not really my thing, but this is something that's more my speed. And it's the other paddlers in the boat that make all the difference.

Sometimes You Should Sit on the Bench

4/22/2017

Today, for Earth Day, we have an insightful guest post by 17 year old Elijah Kent, a multi-talented scholar, athlete, and musician and all-around good guy. If you recognize his last name, it's because he's Tim and Rhonda's eldest son.

Last year, my school took a day in the spring to go out into the city and pick up trash in the downtown area. We cleaned parks, sidewalks, gardens, and parking lots; collected cigarette butts, beer cans, wrappers, old McDonald’s coffee cups, and all other manner of waste (some that one hopes never to encounter)! While we were in one of the downtown parks, I noticed a large, middle-aged woman sitting on a park bench. This woman had clearly experienced devastating loss that had left her in a state of hopelessness. She was, as we say, homeless.

Now, the thing about homelessness is that it is a societal issue that ranks right up there with gender and race inequality and world hunger. Some of the world’s most brilliant minds and compassionate hearts have worked tirelessly to completely eliminate the issue of homelessness but to date, have fallen short. But, I believe that this is because homelessness is not actually the problem, but rather the symptom of a much deeper problem: lack of community.

Open Your Eyes

3/8/2017

Everyone wears glasses.

These aren't reading glasses, or bifocals, or Ray Bans that I'm talking about. I mean the glasses through which we view the world. Sometimes they're rose coloured. Sometimes bleak and grey. Sometimes they even keep us from seeing parts of the world at all.

We're all good at using those blinders, aren't we?

A Volunteer's Perspective

2/8/2017

This month we have a guest post by one of our volunteers, Bernadette Gerrish. Bea has written about her experience helping out with Redwood Park Communities.

I am a volunteer for Redwood Park Communities and I also donate my time to The Salvation Army at the local Bayside Mission. I’m often asked why I choose to volunteer and my reasons are multi-faceted.

The Broken Window

1/11/2017

Have you ever heard of the broken window effect?

There's this theoretical neighbourhood--it's clean and pretty and everyone's friendly. But then, through some accident, a window gets broken. It's just a little crack, and the homeowners can't afford to fix it, so they leave it be. What harm can it do? But then the next door neighbour sees it and lets his grass get a little too long--after all, it doesn't look so bad next to the broken window. Then the neighbour on the other side doesn't bother to fix her cracked driveway, because what does it matter if her neighbours haven't cut their grass or fixed their windows? Pretty soon the whole neighbourhood spirals out of control. We've seen it happen.

But did you know that the broken window effect also works in reverse?

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