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Peter introduced our speaker Ken Smid from True North Aid . Peter had met him at the Rotary Conference held in Toronto this past year and was very impressed with the work they were doing. Ken is the National Director and is dedicated to serving and supporting northern Indigenous communities - providing food / clothing and necessities to the Inuit and First Nations people. The first thing Ken wanted to do was to travel some of these communities to see for himself. What he saw was a very low standard of living - accommodations with 3 generations living in the same home. No clean drinking water and some adults without work living on social assistance . There are 634 Indigenous communities across Canada . Ken mentioned that they had 11 Projects underway. Below are a few that Ken mentioned in his talk. He mentioned that over the last 20 months since becoming director he has raised 270,000 dollars from many sources and donations. True North Aid provides assistance to the NEW Turner Lake & Birch Narrows (SK) community Food Centre . Project Hockey Cares - by providing coaching and equipment to the Attawapiskat community Kenora district for bantam aged (13 - 15) youth and giving them the opportunity to participate in an exchange featuring mixed team hockey games in Oakville . Gives them the opportunity to travel to another part of the province and do some site seeing as well . Big Steel Box - True North Aid purchased a large 20' steel container and with help to fill it with supplies they were able to support communities and their families in Northern SK . Once delivered and emptied would be left on site in Onion Lake to serve as a storage for a food bank . True North Aid Aqua - Ponics developing a project to provide modular Aqua - ponic/hydro - ponic farm to a Northern Indigenous community challenged with food security. Paul Witmer thanked our speaker for a very informative talk . Please visit their website at www.truenorthaid.ca for further information |
