Here at Zero Ceiling, the events of recent weeks have fundamentally disrupted our programs. As many of you know, we support youth who have experienced homelessness with our 12-month program providing employment, housing, life skills, and wrap-around support.
Many of these young people have had challenging childhoods and a large proportion have aged-out of foster care with little to no support. The last few weeks have created yet more instability for them.
We are working hard to meet the individual needs of each of our participants and many of our graduates who still live in the Sea to Sky and further afield. This has always been our approach and is now more important than ever.
We're working to ensure their housing is stable and they remain as healthy, physically and mentally as possible. We're doing weekly grocery deliveries, cooking virtual family dinners together, delivering our life-skills program online, and connecting with everyone individually. We are also considering how we can expand our services to provide support to more young people in vulnerable situations in our community and further afield.
We would like to recognize our incredible staff team, which has taken the last few weeks in stride, delivered our program and worked behind the scenes to ensure that our participants get through these weeks and months in the best way possible.
We would also like to thank three outstanding Whistler community members that have served on our Board of Directors for a number of years, and will be stepping down at our AGM on April 14.
Dave Halliwell, as Board Chair, has overseen the evolution of Zero Ceiling in recent years and has done an incredible job of building the strong team (Board and staff) that we have today. Geoff Telfer has also served for many years and provided valuable strategic advice at many key points in our development. Last, but definitely not least, Dakota Williams has served on the board as a graduate of the program. His life experience and perspective has been extremely valuable as we continually evolve our programs.
Thank you Dave, Geoff, and Dakota—we will miss you. We are excited to welcome Catherine Power-Chartrand and Nicola Bentley to the board.
It has been heart-warming to watch the community mobilize (from their homes) over the last few weeks and gives us immense assurance that Whistler will come out of this tough period a strong, resilient community. We recognize that times are extremely tough for everyone in Whistler right now. If you are able to continue to support Zero Ceiling with a donation (www.zeroceiling.org), we would certainly welcome it. Thank you.
You can also show your support by joining us at our AGM on Tuesday, April 14 at 12 p.m. We will be holding the AGM on Zoom so you can find out what we've been working on, and our plans for the future. Everyone is welcome: please email info@zeroceiling.org to register. We look forward to seeing you there.
Chris Wrightson and Sean Easton // Zero Ceiling co-executive directors
