Help provide vulnerable youth and families with back to school supplies!

The Cause

For more than 55 years, Hull Services has been supporting the mental health and behavioural needs of our most vulnerable children, youth and families across Calgary. Every year, over 4,000 children, youth and families are supported by one of Hull's 26 programs.

One of Hull's community based programs, Patch, is a poverty reduction program that serves Calgary and surrounding areas. Patch is located in Calgary Housing Company (CHC) complexes in neighbourhoods with high concentrations of poverty and other complex issues. Patch strives to reduce poverty and increase stability and thriving amongst children, families and their community. Patch delivers six services in an integrated, wrap-around fashion to target the multi-dimensional nature of poverty: Basic Needs, Employment & Education, Social Inclusion, Child & Family Well-being, Financial Empowerment, and Crisis Support and Personal Capacity.

Patch believes that "children do well when their families do well, and families do better when they live in supportive neighborhoods." Services at Patch are aimed at providing children, youth and adults opportunities to access "what they need in order to live the life they want". All services at Patch are aimed at helping people manage issues related to living with a low income and coping with daily unexpected or expected stress that is exacerbated by feelings of social isolation.

Patch's idea is to provide families with a Back to School Support Pack to help with a healthy and safe transition back to school and provide items the families often cannot afford on their own. Each pack will contain a $75 gift card for families to purchase school supplies and basic needs (food for lunches and snacks). Each pack will also contain masks, hand sanitizer, information about affordable internet, pertinent school information and other resources that will support the family's financial and emotional wellness, and make the transition back to school easier, healthy and safe.

Who Will it Benefit?

Children, youth, adults and families will benefit from the Back to School Support Packs. Patch provides a range of integrated services targeted to address the multi-dimensional nature of poverty for people living in Calgary and surrounding areas. The target population that receives services from Patch are families who are low-income, often immigrants, single parents/caregivers, socially isolated, are English language learners and are faced daily with the stressors of managing poverty. They are resourceful and resilient, and open to enriching their individual/family/community capacity. Approximately 200 families will benefit from this funding across the three Patch hubs. The benefit of these funds could reach approximately 1,200 children, youth and adults.