The team of CVR high school teachers that make up the group Teach, Love, Help have held true to their promise to provide much-needed relief to front-line healthcare workers, in the form of treats, snacks and comfort foods. At the start of the pandemic, colleagues Pamela Bussey, Jessica Barrette, Lisa Evans, Roberta Filiatrault, Sia Georgaklis, and Terri Marino came together to launch a GoFundMe campaign that eventually raised over $5,100 to support healthcare workers. They have been busy ever since making sure these funds go to good use.
“We started with two COVID-19 clinics in Chateauguay,” says Bussey, and from there they have set up tables piled high with goodies (supplied through partnerships with at least 11 local businesses) outside paramedic stations in Ormstown, Huntingdon, and Chateauguay, as well as the temporary evaluation clinic at the Recreation Centre in Ormstown and seven seniors’ residences and CHSLDs. They even brought catered platters to the ER staff at the Anna Laberge Hospital in Chateauguay; and will see an ice cream truck pull up outside the Barrie Memorial Hospital in the coming days.
One of the most rewarding plans to date involved asking people to nominate healthcare workers deserving of a night off from cooking. The Teach, Love, Help team then had 50 homemade lasagnas prepared for the nominees, who picked up their meals at the curling club in Ormstown along with a box of doughnuts for desert. “We’ve had really wonderful partnerships,” Bussey says of the generosity of local businesses that came aboard the project. “This was by far the biggest thing we have organized so far,” she says, noting how everyone was so appreciative of the gesture. The homecooked meal project also brought the teachers into contact with the front-line workers, so they were able to learn a bit more about what the experience has been like for many local healthcare workers. “The day to day is just so different,” she says of the exhausted workers, whose routines have been upended by the virus.
Bussey and the rest of the Teach, Love, Help team are still surprised and “positively overwhelmed by the support,” which saw the project swell to a proportion they were not expecting. But, she suggests, the different projects they have been able to put in place to help workers has so far been “exactly what we were hoping for.” Their work is also garnering a lot of appreciation online on their Facebook page, where fans can see photos of the different projects as they continue to accumulate.
Their work was also noticed by the New Frontiers School Board Council of Commissioners, officially, as the council moved during its most recent meeting on May 5 to acknowledge the work being done by the group of teachers. In a letter written on behalf of the Council of Commissioners, chair David D’Aoust writes: “When we learned that the group consisted of six teachers from our School Board we were not only touched but proud of you for being so thoughtful and caring. In your own way, you have demonstrated how Valley citizens rally to help members of the community when there is a crisis. You showed everyone that we are in this together. What is more, you are one of the reasons that many who benefitted from your help continue to believe in the goodness of people.”