JULY 2020

RECONNECTING COMMUNITY 7/31/2020

Green Wood is pleased to be one of nineteen local organizations to receive funding through Canada's Emergency Community Support Fund administered locally through Northumberland United Way. This will allow us to reconnect informal community supports as we work through the disruptions caused by COVID-19, together.

ONLINE ART AUCTION 7/11/2020

"I’m an artist, so I paint. That’s what I do, so I continued to paint throughout the beginning of the pandemic, not really thinking much about it. I just kept on doing it. But then I started to have these feelings of, what am I really doing this for?"​

For Port Hope fine artist, Pamela Tate, ​Green Wood Coalition was the answer to her question. She was hearing how people who are homeless and people who are stuck in poverty and addiction are faring worse. Why not donate art for an online auction to raise money at a time when the need is greatest but opportunities to fundraise are so few? ​

Three original paintings by Pamela Tate will be offered by online auction starting Monday, July 20, ending Monday, July 27 at 8 PM. Watch Green Wood Coalition’s Facebook page for details.

Pam has long supported Green Wood. She's inspired by the compassion she sees underlying its work, by its grassroots, person-to-person approach to supporting people who have been marginalized by poverty, disability and addiction, and by the sense of community it gives to those who would, otherwise, have no place to belong.

Last June, a close friend took his own life. Despite their 14-year friendship, the young man managed to hide his addiction, fearing she’d withdraw her friendship if she knew. One day, during a paranoid episode, the mask was lifted and, together, in March 2019, they knocked on Green Wood’s door for help.

“I was distraught when he took his life for many reasons, but one of the biggest ones was that I saw this transformation in him as a result of having begun to get help at Green Wood. I’d known him for years, but I felt as if I had never seen the real person -- I mean the real person -- until that day when we were walking, and I kept saying, ‘Do you realize how different you are?’ And he said, ‘yeah, I can feel it.’ He was so calm and steady, even his voice and his demeanor were different. He was a changed man. And I was so happy about that. I thought he’s finally in the right place with the right person who’s going to help him.”

She’s had to accept they sought help too late. By then, her friend’s physical and mental anguish had overwhelmed him. But nothing can erase the transformation she witnessed. If raising donations for Green Wood can help someone else -- before it’s too late -- she’s all in.