"We don’t all have to believe in the same feminism. Feminism can be pluralistic so long as we respect the different feminisms we carry with us, so long as we give enough of a damn to try to minimize the fractures among us."
~ Roxanne Gay
A MESSAGE FROM OUR CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
As all of us move further into the recovery stages of COVID-19, we at YWCA Toronto have been working with different levels of government to advocate for an intersectional approach to these plans. Recently, The Toronto Star published a piece in which we outlined the need to address and alleviate poverty throughout all stages of the city's COVID-19 response plan. Read it here.

Our recent submission to the Ontario Jobs and Recovery Committee elaborates even more on these recommendations and can be found in the links below. We hope you can take some time to read what we have learned from our participants and staff, and reach out to your elected representatives to join us in our calls for a more just way forward.
Photo | Courtesy of the United Nations
ADVOCACY CORNER
With sector partners, we supported a joint submission to the Toronto Office of Recovery and Rebuild (TORR) that is coordinating the City’s recovery response. Our submission highlights concrete, actionable solutions to some of Toronto’s most pressing issues from affordable housing to the environment to food security. TORR will submit a final report to City Council in September.
 
We also outlined seven recommendations for an equitable, gender-responsive recovery plan in a YWCA Toronto submission to the provincial government. In our submission, we emphasized the importance of universal child care, income security reform, affordable housing, investment in women’s employment programs, and decent work conditions.
 
Lastly, the provincial government is reviewing the Ontario’s Child Care and Early Years Act, 2014. We sent a letter urging revisions to the Act in support of a publicly funded, affordable, and high-quality provincial child care system.
 
PROGRAM UDPATE
Our Girls’ Centre is excited to announce that we have begun a re-opening process. With health and safety guidelines in place, and eager girls awaiting, we successfully delivered our first Summer Day Camp from August 4th to 7th. The second session is happening right now, from August 17th to August 21st. We also look forward to developing safe programming for our participants as they return to school in September!

Learn more information about the Girls’ Centre and find out how you can support this important program.

PHILANTHROPY HIGHLIGHT
We shelter and house over 1,700 women, gender-diverse people, and children every year. Throughout the pandemic we have committed to keeping our essential services open, which include four shelters and our permanent housing sites.

Your donation today will help with the increased and unexpected costs of ensuring the very highest standards of hygiene, safety and support for all these women and their children at this critical time.
 

Photo | Courtesy of Native Women's Association of Canada
COMMUNITY RESOURCES
The Native Women’s Association of Canada has put together an incredibly valuable collection of international resources relating to COVID-19 for Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people. There are over eight categories, including Health, Indigenous Rights, and Housing Rights.

Take a look and spread the word.


Photo | Courtesy of Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA)
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) has outlined an alternative federal budget recovery plan in their annual release. Among the key issues that require immediate action are: implement universal public child care so people can get back to work, reform employment insurance, strengthen safeguards for public health, decarbonize the economy, and tackle the gender, racial, and income inequality that COVID-19 has further exposed. 

We encourage you to review and share the proposals with your elected representatives.

Edgy
Photo | Courtesy of Theola Ross
International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples

This year for the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, we featured a beautiful and stirring letter from Theola Ross to her child on our blog. The letter touches on Theola’s journey to parenthood as a queer Indigenous person and what it means to move through the world as an Indigenous person. 
Art | Sophia Muller, Unsplash
Ontario Human Rights Commission Report on Anti-Black Racism

The Ontario Human Rights Commission released a report earlier this month that confirms the commonly held knowledge that Black people in Toronto are disproportionately arrested, charged and subjected to the use of force by Toronto police. We hope this statistical confirmation can help buoy efforts to address and eliminate anti-Black racism in our organizations and communities. #BLM. 
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
YWCA Toronto operates in communities that stand on the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and the Ojibwe and allied nations to share peacefully and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.

Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still the home to many Indigenous people and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this territory as we strive to build a more equitable and just city for all residents.