The charitable organization serves the following population:

Mission Services of Hamilton is a multi-service not for profit charitable organization. This nomination will focus on Willow’s Place & Emma’s Place. Willow’s Place is a safe day space for women experiencing homelessness. It offers hot meals, showers, laundry, housing support and social connection. Emma’s Place is a fifteen-bed shelter that started when the City of Hamilton asked us to provide bed space as a winter response to the lack of shelter beds for women in Hamilton. They have now asked us to make these fifteen beds permanent and so Willow’s Place and Emma’s Place are in the same wing of our building at 196 Wentworth St. North. These two programs share facilities and staffing as well. They serve women (or women-identified individuals) who are 18 and older. Our client base is diverse – we serve all ages, trans women and non-binary individuals, refugees and new immigrants. We serve many women from the local encampments and have women coming from other communities including those that do not have daytime or overnight services for women experiencing homelessness (i.e. Burlington and Halton).

How does this charity serve Burlington/Halton directly:

Although we do not capture statistics on where women last lived before they entered homelessness, we do know that we serve women from Burlington/Halton area. When homeless women are discharged from hospital in Burlington/Halton they are often sent to Willow’s Place as a place to land and get connected to services and shelter. We estimate that we receive on average five women per month coming from hospitals in Burl/Halton. Also, when women are discharged from the VAW (Violence Against Women) shelters there are no other local shelters to be moved to and so these women also end up in Hamilton with Willow’s Place being a landing hub. We estimate that we receive 3-5 women per month who are in this situation. There is a direct link between violence and homelessness with violence often being the path to homelessness for women. Burlington and Halton do not have homeless shelters specific to women nor is there a safe daytime space for women experiencing homelessness so it’s necessary that Burlington and Halton are part of our catchment area.

The donated funds would be used for:

There are two things that we would do with this funding, and they are both intertwined: We want to create a Health Day for Women where for a full day various providers come on site and women experiencing homelessness access these services. Each woman would have a “passport” where they would visit different areas including foot care, haircuts, Naloxone kit training, Covid/flu vaccinations, Diabetes information, food/water/snacks, receive a backpack, receive a winter coat, receive winter boots. If we do not do the Health Day for Women, we need to prepare for a winter response and have winter coats, boots, hats, gloves and rain gear. Each woman would also receive a backpack filled with various items needed for winter survival as many of our clients are sleeping rough. We would have no problem coming up with ideas that would enhance the quality of life for our clients.

The Organization’s current sources of funding are

• City of Hamilton
• Individual donors
• Small grants to help with our costs (i.e. City Enrichment Fund)

Willow’s Place and Emma’s Place is currently underfunded, and we receive 77% of our funding from the City of Hamilton and we need to make up the rest. Our expenses each year for these two critical programs are just over one million dollars.