Introducing The Tide Breaker!

Now that the sun is shining, change is in the air!
To celebrate the early signs of Spring, we decided to bring a little change to our newsletter.

Introducing, THE TIDE BREAKER, the place for breaking news on Turning the Tide. Each month we will share stories across communities, and highlight positive connections being made.
We want to hear from you! Send us your community stories and photos to be featured in our newsletter.

An update from Morgan Dunn, Communities Building Youth Futures Coordinator

As we begin to transition into Year 2 of the Communities Building Youth Futures (CBYF) initiative, we wanted to reflect on the change that has happened throughout our first year.

There has been a lot of engagement with the Youth Connections Team, and we're excited by their energy for this work. During our last meeting, the team decided they want to meet more regularly because once a month was not enough! The team is now sharing leadership roles, responsibilities and co-creating our meetings together. There has also been interest from the team to present to local governments on issues impacting youth, and how we can create mentorship opportunities to support youth in our communities.

The Digby & Area Youth Space (D.A.Y.S) officially launched this month. We have a new calendar of activities and programs planned for April on Mondays and Thursdays each week from 3:30-6:00 pm for youth ages 15-20.
Check out our Facebook Page for more information!

We know there is interest to expand programs at DAYS to include activities for all ages. Ideas we're exploring are an internet cafe, a study space for young adults, and drop in hours for younger youth. We also want to support youth serving organizations to utilize the space to create a youth hub. If you are organizing or hosting activities for youth and need a place to meet, let us know!

A top priority for this new year is the recruitment of Action Teams to support our 4 priority areas: Education, Employment, Supports and Services, and Activities and Spaces. If any of these areas are of interest to you, please let us know!

The Community Cares Project

"Supporting residents in need in my community like this really makes me happy." - Meika Blandin

The Community Cares Project provides essential products, such as personal care items and non-perishable groceries to the many residents and non-profit organizations in Digby County.
This is done primarily by using coupons and points, earned or donated, to purchase products for individuals and organizations in need at a fraction of the cost.

The Community Cares project was led by Meika Blandin, in partnership with the Freeport Food Bank. Meika believes that many organizations do not have a budget for personal hygiene, laundry or household cleaning items as they can be expensive. From her experience, organizations tend to concentrate more on essential food and nutritional items.

In the first phase of the project, the Freeport Food Bank received $500 for Meika to purchase items for the Digby SchoolsPlus Free Stores. Within a few weeks, Community Cares had:

Earned and redeemed 423,000 PC points
Took advantage of a redemption event at Shoppers for an extra $200 in savings
Used a total of $100 in coupons for purchases
Purchased over 200 items, including hygiene products, toiletries and non-perishable food. The total retail value was $1692.80 regular price (taxes in)
By pairing sales with "bonus point" offers (the sales featuring points in the flyers), personal PC Optimum offers, coupons and redemption events, Meika saved $1,192.80!

The Community Cares Project has received further funding to continue the project. Recipients of the project's donations were also expanded to include local food banks and more community organizations!

As we change from one fiscal year to the next, we want to share back what we've learned from the Community Connection Grants throughout the year. This Spring, we will measure the impacts each project has had on their community and will be collecting stories from those involved. During this time, the committee will not be reviewing new project proposals. The reviewing of projects will resume this Summer.

In the meantime, we encourage you to submit your project ideas by clicking the banner below!

We would like to thank all project proponents, community partners and the Community Connection Grants Committee for all your hard work with creating positive connections in communities!

For local support and resources across the Digby area, click below:

Community Resource Document

FOR UPDATED & ACCURATE INFORMATION RE: COVID 19 these are the "go to" sites:

Province of Nova Scotia: https://novascotia.ca/coronavirus

Government of Canada: https://canada.ca/coronavirus toll-free information line 1-833-784-4397

Department of Health and Wellness and Nova Scotia Government social media channels. Follow them @nshealth and @nsgov on Twitter and https://www.facebook.com/NovaScotiaHealthAndWellness/ and https://www.facebook.com/nsgov/ on Facebook.