Secondary Schools

Information relevant to your work in education

Addressing pressing local issues in the community you work in and care about

Every community has its own challenges that need individualized support. United Way Perth-Huron is proud to share with you the projects we have been involved with in our communities to help address pressing local needs.

Stratford & Area: Partly as a result of rising housing costs, homelessness increased by 60% during the pandemic. In an effort to tackle this #UNIGNORABLE issue in Stratford, a drop-in space opened for those experiencing homelessness or otherwise vulnerable. The Stratford Connection Centre offers wrap-around supports including trauma-informed care, substance use and mental health counselling, as well as basic needs such as showers, laundry and food. Services are client-centred, providing dignity and choice with an unrelenting focus on securing permanent housing.

Goderich & Area: Homelessness isn’t just about sleeping on the streets; it affects almost every aspect of life including family well-being, employment and physical and mental health and almost 80% of homelessness is either hidden or unreported. The Goderich and area community remains committed to addressing the #UNIGNORABLE issue of lack of housing.
United Way Perth-Huron supports the community’s efforts to address lack of housing through support of the Huron Homelessness Initiative, including programs providing shelter for women, children and youth as well as emergency shelter during the cold months of the year.

Northern Huron: Homelessness is a growing challenge in the Northern Huron community. Together with community partners, United Way is working on short- and long-term solutions to this #UNIGNORABLE issue. Serving Howick, Morris-Turnberry and North Huron, the planned Northern Huron Connection Centre is intended as a welcoming, safe space for the community’s most vulnerable citizens to rest, access basic needs, healthcare services, identification assistance and more. Partnerships with agencies — including Choices for Change, the organization chosen by UWPH to operate the centre — mean those using the centre can access important services and supports under one roof. Located at St. Paul’s Trinity Anglican Church in Wingham, United Way is hoping to open the space in February of 2023.

North Perth: Homelessness has become more visible in North Perth. This awareness has sparked a deeper look into what the community needs. At the same time, United Way has been working to develop a community hub where service agencies can work together to better support clients. HOPE Links allows people to access multiple services in a supportive and welcoming environment, eat nutritious food and connect socially and emotionally. By creating a local place to connect, HOPE Links aims to build a supportive network for participants and help them build a brighter future. 

Southern Huron: The South Huron Connection Centre is a welcoming place offering basic needs such as light meals, a shower, washroom facilities and laundry. Partnerships with numerous agencies offering support to local people in need mean those using the centre can access important services and supports under one roof. Over the next three years, a community garden, collective kitchen programs and early years programming will be added, breaking down barriers and developing relationships between community members.

St. Marys & Area: Food insecurity is linked to learning difficulties, obesity, reduced productivity for kids at school and poorer mental health. The NOURISH Equal Access Food Market helps mitigate the effects of poverty by offering wholesale prices on fresh veggies, fruits and meat to residents facing food insecurity; providing a dignified shopping experience to 70 attendees every month.

The St. Marys Community Developer and Support Worker works to help support those living in and around social housing — understanding their challenges and connecting them with services while strengthening networks and awareness, ensuring the community becomes a happier, healthier place for everyone to live.

Financial support for your students and their families in a time of crisis through the Urgent Needs Fund

57% of people with an income in Perth-Huron earn less than a living wage (under $35,000 per year), living paycheque to paycheque with no buffer against life’s challenges. These are some of the most resilient members of our community, but one emergency can create a crisis that’s hard to recover from. The Urgent Needs Fund needs your support to continue helping cover costs in a time of immediate crisis for people like Jasmine and her family:

“All my life I’ve dealt with chronic illness and thanks to the added stress of the past couple years, I kept getting worse. It got so bad my doctor told me I needed to stop my job and try to get healthy again.

“My husband kept working, but it’s tough on our family coping with only one income. Our budget got tighter each month and our savings quickly disappeared. Then our daughter got sick and needed medication that wasn’t covered by my husband’s employer. With bills coming due, we didn’t know where to turn.

“Luckily, I found out about United Way’s Urgent Needs Fund. I applied and we got enough money to cover the pharmacy bill.”

If a family at your school is facing financial challenges, please direct them to dial 2-1-1. A trained 211 Navigator will assess the caller’s challenges and determine if the fund would be the best way to help before beginning the simple application process while the caller is on the line.

Use 211 & 211ontario.ca to connect members of your school community with local programs

211 is a free, confidential helpline connecting individuals and families to services. A live, trained counsellor answers calls 24/7/365 in over 150 languages and will talk through the caller’s challenges. Problems rarely have just one solution, so the chance to talk about multiple challenges and receive referrals for each is an incredible local service. Your donation directly helps this valuable service continue to be available to those in your school community. Share the number with your students, colleagues, friends and neighbours. No problem is too big or too small for 211. Simple searches are also available at infoperthhuron.ca (but a phone call is better).

You can call on behalf of a family or suggest the family call.

Providing local data to help inform classroom learning

Help your students learn more about the well-being of their community through myPerthhuron.ca, a United Way Perth-Huron initiative. myPerthHuron is a constantly evolving, centralized platform to find data and statistics on:

Helpful to schools and libraries, myPerthHuron is also becoming a central source for local municipalities, counties and service providers to find real time information about the communities they serve. Your generous donation will help ensure valuable resources like myPerthHuron continue to be available in our community.

Helping provide brighter futures to people in your school community and beyond

Thanks to United Way, its partners and donors last year, almost 33,000 vulnerable people across Perth County, Huron County, St. Marys and Stratford. With United Way’s support, almost 50 local organizations can concentrate on helping their clients instead of worrying about funding sources.

Your donation helps support United Way’s work in the community, addressing a diverse set of challenges for those experiencing homelessness, battling mental health problems, living with intimate partner violence, making a fresh start after incarceration, facing food insecurity and youth in need of mentors to name just a few. 

Share ongoing local advocacy for the most vulnerable in our communities to help lift them beyond poverty

Half of households in Perth-Huron are living on less than a living wage.

The concept of a Living Wage is bigger than income. It’s about quality of life. It’s about ensuring that families in our school communities can afford to pay their rent and buy nutritious food; that parents are healthy and able to pay for transportation to get to work every day; and children are given sufficient social and educational opportunities to flourish.

Based on a 35-hour work week, the living wage for Perth-Huron is calculated regularly using local data and takes into account the living expenses of a weighted average of family types including a family of four, a single mother supporting a seven-year-old child and a single adult, once government transfers and deductions are factored in. Everyday expenses in the calculation include housing, food, utilities, childcare and transportation. LEARN MORE about the living wage in Perth-Huron.

United Way Perth-Huron invests in long-term planning and advocacy around Basic Income, living wage and poverty reduction. Your donation supports that work, helping lift our local community and making a better life for everyone.

Resources to help your students make educated choices

Years ago, United Way Perth-Huron would print ‘the little black book’ to help youth find local programs and services. In an effort to create a more sustainable model, and reach out to young people where they were, connectyouthperthhuron.ca became THE local resources for youth in the community.  Feedback from the community tells us Connect Youth helps empower youth to make good decisions and is quite often the impetus for them reaching out to an adult for help once they have had the opportunity to research and process the information themselves. Please share this United Way funded service with your students, friends, neighbors and families and consider donating to support this and other important community services provided locally by United Way.

Learn more about the pressing local issues affecting the community you work in and the way forward

It’s hard to support a solution if you don’t know what the grassroots problem is. United Way Perth-Huron is proud to have an in-house Social Research and Planning Council (SPRC) — powered by over 50 local volunteers — working on the pressing local issues including mental health, poverty reduction, Basic Income and Living Wage advocacy. The SRPC releases reports regularly, delving into community issues and offering recommendations. For more information about the SRPC’s reports visit https://perthhuron.unitedway.ca/research/. 

Challenge your students to get more involved in helping their local community

United Way Perth-Huron is here to help your school community, whether it’s through 211, Connect Youth Perth-Huron, MyPerthHuron, the Urgent Needs Fund, research and planning, volunteering, poverty reduction advocacy, regional initiatives or helping almost 33,000 people in Perth-Huron. Please share these resources to help those in need.  

We are excited about an upcoming event in the New Year:

Coldest Night of the Year: Walk on your own or with friends any time during February or join us for one of the in-person events happening on Feb 25^th, 2023 in Exeter, Goderich, Listowel, St. Marys, Stratford and Wingham. We hope school communities across our region come together in support of those in the places we live experiencing homelessness, hurt and hunger. Look for more information in the weeks to come!