We are taking a pause.
Since StopGap Foundation was co-founded in 2013, we’ve consistently been growing and increasing our impact. 2019 was a huge year for StopGap and we were headed along an upwards trajectory in the first few months of 2020 with increased staffing, dedication towards process improvement and impact measurement. Then we entered a global pandemic.
While we have strong online engagement, and our ramp ordering process is digitized, we are really a hands-on, community based organization with lots of in-person interactions. We’ve realized that while we could try to translate some of our programming into virtual experiences, that we would better serve our community of friends, families, donors, sponsors, and volunteers by taking a pause and waiting this one out. We’re confident that this plan will allow us to hit the ground running after the storm passes. Personally, I’m planning to use this pause as an opportunity to rest and reflect on all our successes… and failures!
So this newsletter is designed to inform you about what we accomplished before the global pandemic and what we will be doing over the next few months.
Most importantly, we want you to know that we’re thinking of you and sending you loving affirmations of strength, health, and togetherness. This situation is challenging all aspects of our society and each of our lives in unprecedented ways. May we find strength, health and togetherness in our like-minded pursuit for a barrier-free and inclusive society. And may we bring our collective goals, dreams and visions to life in the “new reality” after the dust settles.
Our School Project and Interim Director!
When we received the incredibly generous funding from Toyota to develop and expand our school project, we hired the very talented consultant Debbie Croft, whose background includes Elementary School teaching, Non-Profit Administrative Support and Project Management, which complemented her years of passionate volunteering for StopGap.
Debbie & Luke discuss School Project timelines.
She moved ahead on updating our curriculum packages for our school programming in the GTA, while lining up all the necessary steps to launch our expansion into other cities and provinces with Accessibility & Inclusion Ambassadors and a few pilot schools this Spring. While the rest of our team (including me) will not be working for the next few months, Debbie will be holding down the fort as our Interim Director, managing our operations including monitoring all our emails and systems while preparing for further development and relaunching our School Project in September 2020.
Read more about what we’ve accomplished in 2020 and what our plans are for the next few months in the remainder of the packed newsletter:
A screenshot of the next section of the newsletter, with a yellow background. The first words are ‘So let’s celebrate 2020 so far!’