You’ve been redirected here from yegspark.ca, which is on hiatus. Read a September 2021 message from the yegSpark team below.
Let’s call it hibernation
It’s fall. Time to slow things down a little. To rest and take stock.
That’s what yegSpark is doing. For 18 months, we’ve been pushing and striving together with our members, finding ways to help in spite of lockdowns, restrictions and resources stretched to the limit. Not to mention the simmering anxiety that few have escaped during this pandemic.
We know the giving won’t stop, but yegSpark has to step back for a bit, while the organizations that backed this incredible initiative figure out how to keep it going.
Since the beginning, we were amazed and humbled by the generosity of those who signed up for yegSpark and committed their time, creativity and energy to make life a little better for people in our community. We started small, crocheting those little button bands to make masks more comfortable for Catholic Social Services workers. Hundreds of them.
Members helped plant the garden at Terra Centre’s Brentwood House. They cheered up the outdoor visitors area at the Edmonton General hospital, stringing brightly painted hearts on the fence and filling the garden with colourful rocks that told patients, workers and families “You’re important!” “Be strong,” “Believe in yourself,” “Hope.” Later, they painted mugs to add to gift baskets for isolated seniors and more rocks for the gardens at Operation Friendship Seniors Society’s drop-in centre and residences.
They sewed: aprons for the kitchens at La Salle women’s shelter and Compassion House and as gifts for Terra’s high school grads; nursing covers for moms with babies in intensive care at the Grey Nuns hospital; and literally thousands of bonding hearts for neonatal ICU families there and at the Misericordia.
They volunteered to unload bottled-water donations at The Mustard Seed during a heatwave and to sort donations in their warehouse; to help at a pop-up COVID-19 vaccination clinic and a school-supplies giveaway and as drivers for Zero Food Waste Edmonton and the C5 Hub’s pantry program.
And the yarn ninjas? The knitters and crocheters? Amazing. They made and donated hundreds of NICU bonding hearts and sweet, little heart-shaped pillows for St. Albert seniors, as well as countless stuffies and twiddlemuffs for people with dementia. Beautiful, thoughtful work that brought joy and comfort.
The yegspark.ca website and social media accounts will go dark at the end of September 2021. If you were signed up for any current opportunities, you should have received an email with instructions for what to do and who to contact if you are still working on make-and-donate projects. Ask them about other service opportunities, or check with one of the organizations listed below, who took a chance on yegSpark in our early days. Hopefully, they will be able to fully reopen their volunteer programs soon:
- Action for Healthy Communities
- Alzheimer Society of Alberta
- Catholic Social Services
- Compassion House
- Covenant Care
- Covenant Health
- Edmonton’s Food Bank
- Edmonton Tool Library
- Jewish Federation of Edmonton
- The Mustard Seed
- NICU Crocheters
- Operation Friendship Seniors Society
- Rotary Club of St. Albert
- Seeds for Seniors
- Terra Centre
- WILDNorth wildlife rescue & rehabilitation
- YEG Seniors Project
- Zero Food Waste Edmonton
Questions? Please contact our friends at the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton. You can call 780-469-1010, email archedmonton@caedm.ca or use the contact form on this website.
Thanks, as always, for your time and service.
