Samantha Edwards is an award-winning journalist based in Toronto. She works as an audience editor at The Globe and Mail and has contributed to the Toronto Star, CBC, Toronto Life, West End Phoenix, Esquire, and The Local. She also edits beautiful urbanism and travel books for Berlin-based publisher Gestalten. Previously, she worked as a staff writer at the Toronto alt-weekly NOW magazine, where she covered a wide swath of issues, including affordable housing, music, and local politics. These days, she enjoys writing about social justice issues, the climate crisis, books, and music. When she’s not writing, she can likely be found eating ramen, gardening, cycling, travelling, and hanging out with her cats, Marble and Bug.
As Whitehorse celebrates 10 years of Pride, organizer Queer Yukon looks back at its history, from volunteer-run grassroots group to non-profit in 2018. Now the group is weighing whether to become a charity.
Grassroots organizations are an integral part of the non-profit sector, responding to needs and shaping how communities care for each other. This profile, the fourth in a series, looks at how two sisters, starting with a podcast aimed at amplifying Indigenous voices from across Turtle Island, followed by a meal program to help the residents of a homeless encampment in Regina, are helping urban Indigenous youth reclaim their culture.
Grassroots organizations are an integral part of the non-profit sector, responding to community needs when governments and established organizations fail to do so. This profile, the second in a series, looks at a microlending program launched from one woman’s desire to live “in a town that still functions.”
Grassroots organizations are an integral part of the non-profit sector, responding to needs and shaping how communities care for each other. This profile, the first in a series, looks at how a group of Haligonians, recognizing that vulnerable people had nowhere to go during the pandemic and that government and non-profit organizations weren’t acting quickly enough, came together to fill a pressing need.
Over the past year, hundreds of groups have sprung up to address community needs when governments and established institutions failed to do so. These volunteer-driven grassroots groups don’t have headquarters or boards of directors. Many don’t have websites or phone numbers. Mostly, they exist solely on social media and online forums.
As well-trusted institutions in the communities they serve, non-profit organizations can play a key role in assisting the vaccination rollout and aiding public health campaigns – via anti-hesitancy initiatives, virtual multilingual town halls, pop-up inoculation centres, or help with booking appointments.
