As many of you know, I’ve been living in public housing for a long time. Since 2009 to be exact. And despite my best efforts to get out, it just hasn’t happened yet.
I eventually realized the odds were stacked against people like me, so in 2021, I started a food charity just so people like me could eat. By July 2022, The VanDyck Foundation achieved registered charitable status through the Charities Directorate at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and we fed thousands of starving residents in Barrie and Innisfil, Ontario.
Some of you might also know that I’m a Christian. Now, this entire time I’ve been forced to live in legitimate hell, which is public housing, I’ve wondered why on earth God is allowing this to happen, especially for so long.
You see, I’ve always believed that everything happens for a reason, and so I always figured that my experiences in public housing would ultimately serve a specific purpose… one day.
So when I launched the Fresh Food Weekly program, I figured my purpose for suffering was to develop a compassion and a heart for others who’ve suffered in the same way I have. But even still, I always knew that running the food charity wasn’t God’s plan for me for my entire life. Yes, I’m good at it. But even at the beginning, I told myself I didn’t want to run the Fresh Food Weekly program for longer than five years (although I always knew it needed to exist for longer than five years—my plan was to hire someone else to run it and I’d just keep it in trust).
Facing a New Direction
Well it turns out that this particular time in my life is a transitional period to move onto the next phase of The VanDyck Foundation’s development. At the beginning of November 2024, Hamed Amiran, a Real Estate Developer based in Toronto reached-out on Facebook and asked to connect because he thought there might be an opportunity for us to work on a specific project together in the future.
I was intrigued.
About a week later, we had our first 40-minute Zoom meeting and that’s when we discovered we both have a heart for helping low-income families. He actually has a vision to build townhouses in a rent-to-own housing program here in the County of Simcoe.
To me, this sounded a bit too good to be true. But then he offered to come meet with me in-person, here in Barrie. So last weekend, we had brunch together in the south end. Long story short, he’s offered to pay to get my charity turned into a not-for-profit corporation and asked me to reach-out to a law firm to schedule a meeting to get this done.
So I reached out to a local law firm who does this kind of thing and we have a three-way conference call scheduled next week.
And then two days ago, a woman who manages an accounting firm, also reached out on Facebook, and told me she’s been keeping up with my journey online, and asked if there was anything she could do to help. So now we have a meeting scheduled next week too.
Establishing a New Local Service Board
All this being said, we still need a Food Systems Planning Office in the County of Simcoe, and my plan to do this is through the establishment of a new local service board (LSB).
I’ve never tried to establish an LSB before and to be honest, right now, I’m pretty busy learning how to prosecute Barrie Housing through the court system and this is very time consuming and it requires my full attention. So I’m wondering if there’s anyone in the County of Simcoe who’s also interested in having a new LSB, which would be called a ‘Food Systems Planning Office’ and who’d be willing to take on the role of organizing an establishment committee for it?
Ideally, the new LSB would work with local housing services providers, with the sole purpose of achieving household food security for low-income households experiencing food insecurity.
If you’ve been paying attention to what I’ve been posting since the summer, you’ll know that this will be no easy task, as the City of Barrie has not only tried to put a ban of feeding the homeless, they’ve also created a by-law to prevent me from finding out how many bedrooms per Rent-Geared-to-Income (RGI) household are at each of Barrie Housing’s 14 housing projects.
If you have experience with organizing community groups, and feel like this is something you’d enjoy taking on as the lead, or would like to be a part of as one of the 10 proposed inhabitants that would comprise the proposed establishment committee, please send me an email at: leah.dyck@icloud.com.
Thank you for any help you may be able to provide regarding the County of Simcoe’s thousands of starving residents whose living circumstances are getting worse by the day.
Sincerely,
Leah Dyck
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