September has rolled around on the calendar and next week students are heading back to school.
It’s hard to believe the summer is winding down - it always seems to go by in the blink of an eye.
Home Suite Hope will be ensuring its single parent participants – and their children – are back in class and well equipped to make their marks, thanks to Sagen.
Our long-time corporate sponsor has helped with funding so each of HSH's Homeward Bound Halton program’s single parents, and each of their children, receive a backpack filled with school supplies essential to making the grade this school year.
HSH’s Back to School Backpack campaign is an annual affair. This year Sagen took up the cause.
It also wouldn’t be possible without the input of the Bargains Group and Kits for a Cause, which help HSH transform the monetary support into the goodies – notebooks, rulers, pens, pencils, calculators (you know the list!) we hope will assist and inspire our returning students in the coming year.
We owe thanks to those who stepped up to volunteer with logistics. Homeward Bound Halton participant Nicole and her son graciously picked up the backpacks from Sagen and delivered to HSH. Others were kindly getting involved in final touches and delivery logistics.
Home Suite Hope helps single parents move from homelessness or precarious housing scenarios to self-sufficiency.
The four-year process begins with a year of stabilization – in housing, child care, supports like life skills and academic upgrading, if required. This is followed by a two-year post-secondary education that wouldn’t be possible without the support in the form of tuition bursaries from Sheridan College.
Our single parents can select from among a range of programs – all of which are proved to have high employment rates for graduates. Upon graduation from Sheridan, the parents receive continued support from HSH through the job search and move to self-sufficiency. It’s then that they graduate from our program.
Throughout, they receive what HSH calls wraparound support – counselling, life skills, networking, mentorship, food and transportation supports – as they work toward moving away from poverty and homelessness to employment and housing stability.
While our participants and even graduates have faced augmented challenges due to the pandemic and rising housing costs and inflation, HSH has remained beside and behind them on their journey – one we hope not only moves them out of the cycle of poverty, but steers their families away from the cycle of generational poverty.
So as they and their children head back to school in hopes of making real change in their lives, HSH owes a great debt of gratitude for the support of corporates like Sagen and its employees for reaching out into the community to help others effect real change.
Go get ’em!