At Fresh Start, I discovered that people can show love to people they don’t even know. I had never even thought of that before. It changed everything for us.
With grants from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Reaching Home, St. Thomas-Elgin Community Foundation and Libro Credit Union, Fresh Start’s 2022 House of Homes project will break ground on four new affordable, supportive apartments for at-risk families. But like any commodity being transformed into a living spirited work of community, capable hearts are required as much as capable hands.
Thirty-four years of guiding families toward a solid foundation has taught us a few things. One of them is that children growing up in traumatic environments are more likely to experience mental illness, turn to intravenous drugs to cope, and have children of their own at a young age, which perpetuates the cycle of suffering and systemic dependence.
With an eye to severing the intergenerational cycle of trauma that keeps many communities locked into ever-increasing law-enforcement, criminal-justice, social, and health-care budgets, Fresh Start, embodies the timeless wisdom that compassion is the common sense strong communities are built upon.
By supporting this year’s House of Homes capital campaign, you join a group of people committed to creating safe, supported homes. You join us in fostering the notion of home in the larger sense — the community sense — as a place where even strangers care for one another, and prosperity is the reward for prioritizing people.
DONATE TODAY
to help us build a House of Homes
E-TRANSFER
An e-transfer can be sent to:
CHEQUE
A cheque can be mailed to:
PO Box 51
St. Thomas PO Main
ON, N5P 3T5
or dropped off during
business hours at:
797 Talbot Street, St Thomas
CREDIT CARD
Credit Card donations are processed
through our Canada Helps page.
* If donating by cheque or e-transfer, please specify if it's for the House of Homes campaign.
THANK YOU FOR PARTNERING WITH US!
APARTMENT RENDERINGS
We are excited to share the layouts of the four additional apartments that are being built through the House of Homes Campaign. We pray that the lives of the mothers and babies living in these new spaces will be blessed with healing; that laughter will fill the halls, and they will be filled with hope.
The programs I accessed at Fresh Start brought repressed trauma from abuse to the surface. I learned how my brain works there, and how to work with it. I now use the strategies I learned to help my children deal with the challenges they face from their past. Kindness is contagious, but it has to start somewhere.
WHERE WELCOME CAN CHANGE WORLDS
90
families applied for services at Fresh Start in 2021
66
families were looking for homelessness or housing insecurity supports
28
was the average age of the mothers that requested support
46
families felt where they were living was unsafe for themselves or their children
336
formal group and individual programming sessions were offered
24
families did not have supports from another agency
70
families applied to live at Fresh Start
44
families attended parenting and regulation & co-regulation programming
28
families were looking for help with their children’s development
20
families were looking for addictions supports
36
families needed help navigating the social support system
30
families were looking for supports after domestic violence
I was pregnant at sixteen and my parents were not supportive. I discovered Fresh Start when they hosted a parenting class at the library. Despite my — as I see it
in hindsight — terrible attitude, Fresh Start never quit on me.
Now I am going to college.
They showed me a path in life I had never seen before, not just
as a mom, but as a person.
They got through to me where no one else had.
I am seven years clean.
I have my family.
I have my own business.
I have my faith.
It’s where I learned
to let people in.
And when that happened, I wasn’t replacing
loneliness with
drugs any more.
