Happy Black Friday, everyone! It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks here at Operation Come Home, as we prepare for the holidays. Up next – Cyber Monday where people shop online, and Giving Tuesday where people make donations to their favourite charities! Here are a couple of ways you can help us on both days:
Before Monday, sign up to www.iGive.com. It’s easy, and takes about 40 seconds! Once you have signed up, and chosen Operation Come Home as your charity of choice, everything else happens automatically. Any time you make a purchase, the company from which you buy will make a donation to OCH, if they are one of the participating groups. No extra cost to you, no extra effort on your part – just free money for OCH!
Then on Tuesday, be sure you’re following Operation Come Home on Twitter (@ochottawa)! There is a special #GivingTuesday contest that, with your involvement, could earn us up to $50,000! The contest starts at 9:00 am sharp, so look for our tweets and follow the instructions. It will take just a few seconds, and will be a huge help!
Now, for the good news of the week!
On Thursday, we were honoured to host a book launch. Frederick Dryden, who founded Liberty For Youth in Hamilton, spoke passionately about his experiences with homelessness, abuse and crime. He turned those experiences into something positive, interacting with youth involved in the criminal justice system. Recently, he ran from Hamilton to Ottawa to advocate for those youth, and then wrote a book about it! He launched ‘Running For Their Lives’ here at OCH this week. Then he took the time to speak to each of our youth individually, giving them his book for free and signing it for them. It was a wonderful event, sponsored by the Rotary Club of Ottawa.
We spent the bulk of last week building, storing and delivering BEER advent calendars for Nita Beer Company! This is a part of our Growler Exchange program, which is a part of our BottleWorks program. If you were lucky enough to pick up one of the advent calendars before they sold out last Saturday, chances are one of our staff will deliver it to you. Thank you for choosing Operation Come Home as your preferred delivery method!
And finally, we close with Josh Peeters of Capital Homes Realty, who threw a fundraiser for us and came in with a cheque for $400 from an event they held for us. Not only that, but Josh has pledged to join us for the original 24 Hours of Homelessness, coming up January 24th-25th! If you’d like to join Josh and the ten others who have already committed, send us a note! Email Lynda (lynda@operationcomehome.ca) and Eric (eric@operationcomehome.ca) to join our 2019 fundraising team. And thanks Josh!