Habitat for Humanity Touches Lives

My name is Vanessa, and I would like to talk to you tonight about how Habitat for Humanity has touched lives, and how you can help Habitat for Humanity make a difference.

We are a non-profit organization that builds houses for those who are living below the poverty line, or have been made homeless by natural disasters. We do not work for free. We identify people who need safe, decent, quality housing the most, and we give them a hand up in achieving that goal; not a hand-out. Begun in 1976 by Millard Fuller, there are currently 72 branches in Canada, and over 2,300 active Habitat affiliates worldwide in more than 93 countries. What does a Habitat House cost? As I said, we do not work for free: a home costs a partner family 500 hours of sweat equity, and about $150,000.

I have been a part of this community for five years now this month, and let me tell you; it is a wonderful community to be a part of. Here is how we’ve helped effect Toronto for the better:

We Touch Lives:
By bringing people together under one common goal:
By we, you see, we don’t have to be only the people being paid to work for Habitat. We are the individual and group volunteers, the site supervisors, the Crew Leaders, the contractors, the Alternative school students, the Exchange students, the Build Blitz groups, the House Leaders, the sponsors, and especially the partner families. We are the community that makes up Habitat for Humanity.

We Touch Lives: By building teams:
One thing I hear time and time again during my work with corporate groups is how “I never knew so-and-so before,” or “I don’t want to go back to the office tomorrow”, and not because they are tired and sore, although that usually is a factor, but because “I haven’t worked with this part of my brain in such a long time; it’s so refreshing!” The Habitat experience brings professional groups outdoors, and gets them working together as a team in very different ways than they usually do.

We Touch Lives: By giving partner families a chance to be a part of something so much bigger than THEY are to build their own home:
Some of the partner family members who donate their sweat equity hours to onsite work sometimes feel overwhelmed with gratitude just being a part of a project this big, and being able to build their own home with the help of so many kind strangers!! I mean, that must be an incredible experience, to think “this is MY HOUSE!! I went from such sub-standard housing conditions, to being a part of my own house being built!” That’s incredible!

You can also touch lives. Here are some things that you can do:
There are so many ways to contribute to Habitat’s goals, that there is bound to be at least one way out there that is right for you. We bring families together with our Gingerbread Builds, and Father’s / Mother’s Day events each year. On the most awkward day of the year, we bring together singles and couples for a v.entertaining day of mostly non-building on v.Day (Feb 14). We have 4 Restores around Toronto, where you can buy used and donated pieces of homes for your home, or donate pieces yourself. If you like to travel for a cause, you can sign up for one of our Global Village Programs. As well as volunteering your time, there are also opportunities to make corporate donations, personal donations, and give gifts-in-kind.

So to summarize:
H4H has touched lives for over 35 years by building simple, decent homes for those most in need of them, and we will continue to seek to build homes for people around the world as long as we exist. It is a great organization to work for because it is such an open inclusive community, where everyone can contribute, and everyone feels like a part of the group. There are so many opportunities to get involved as well, so that everyone looking to help can find a way to make a difference that they feel comfortable with doing.

Happy Birthday to my Blog!

This is my shoutout to my blog! Yeah me! And yeah blog!

Hockey’s place in Canada

Hockey as we now know it may draw on many sources, but it was born, and it evolved here in Canada. Hockey is our game!

Madame Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters, most welcome guests, and especially newcomers to this great country, let me introduce you to our game.

Timeline
The boys of hockey laced up their skates to play the first documented official hockey game in March of 1875, but the game only vaguely resembled what we see played today.

The Stanley Cup, named after Governor-General Frederick Stanley, who bought the first trophy – the silver bowl that sits on top of the cup today – is awarded each year to the winning team of the NHL Play-offs. The Cup was first awarded in the 1893-94 season by Mr. Stanley, to recognize this great game by awarding a prize to the best team in Canada each year.

In 1917, the NHL was created with an initial roster of 4 teams. It grew, then contracted through the depression, and stayed quite small through Second World War, but in 1942 the “Original Six” were born. These six teams; the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens New York Rangers and the Toronto Maple Leafs, were the only 6 teams in the league until 1967.

In 1923, Foster Hewitt appeared on the scene as the play-by-play announcer of the game, and remained the biggest voice in hockey until 1963. He was the first one to use the phrase “He shoots, He scores!”

In 1994, Hockey legally became the national winter sport of Canada … ironically, this was also the year of the hockey lockout, when people realized that salaries needed to be capped, and a major overhaul of some of the organization of the NHL was required.

Obviously, this lockout made the country realize that we desperately needed to do something to ensure that this game continued on in Canada, so we made it official.

A Canadian Icon
I’m going to take you with me on a very short journey. Close your eyes, take a deep breath and picture yourself at home, on a Saturday night. If you’re like countless thousands Canadians, you’ll be headed to the couch, with a beer in hand, or maybe even a cup of Tim Hortons coffee. You’re ready to settle down for the night, so you reach for the remote, and turn on the game. Now, open your eyes.

Ah, speaking of Tim Horton, there was a true Canadian. Everyone knows about the chain Tim Horton’s, and many people get their daily fix of coffee there, but how many people know how many Stanley Cups Timmy brought to Toronto?

Who was Tim Horton exactly? Well, he was born nine hours north of here, in Cochrane Ontario. He grew up playing hockey there. When he was 18, his family moved to Sudbury, and it was there that the Toronto Maple Leafs signed him on to their junior team. He donned a Leafs jersey in the fall of 1952 and remained a Leaf until 1970, winning four Stanley Cups over his career.

In 1964, Horton opened his first Tim Horton Doughnut Shop in Hamilton. That first one shop has grown to become today’s multi-million dollar chain boasting more than 3,000 locations across Canada and the United States. But enough about coffee. Back to hockey!

Why is hockey the most popular sport in Canada?
Well, as we’ve already seen, it’s steeped in tradition. But there’s more than just that.

Our country’s geography and climate lend themselves to the game, as most of the country is below 0 degrees from November to March, creating a lot of natural ice! Combine the 2500 listed ice rinks across the country, with all the unlisted ice surfaces in parks and backyards across the country, and you get an ice rink the size of British Columbia. That’s a lot of hockey!

The next proof of how much we love hockey is in the bottom line. Hockey, as an industry, generates a revenue of many millions of dollars a year, impacting more than one other industry.
There are: arena rentals, maintenance and construction, player registrations, equipment sales, training courses for everyone from age 3 to age 63, Tim Horton’s revenue, hotels accommodations for teams, families and fans, food and beverages for those hockey tournaments, BEER, transportation (from the family mini-van to the Maple Leaf’s bus), concessions at arenas, physiotherapy, chiropractors, gate revenue (ticket sales for the NHL), team merchandise revenue, property rights, cable fees, hockey pools, The list could go on for a very long time. Hockey in Canada has a huge impact on our economy.

Where else in the world would you watch a mini-series about a hockey player-turned coach-turned perhaps the most iconic hockey critic in the country? Love him or hate him, we’ve all heard of Don Cherry. Where else in the world would there be a “game show” based on hockey skaters teaming up with figure skaters, with all the winnings going to charity?

That’s right, only in Canada, where the temperatures really DO go down to -50 below, and where one night each week, houses across the country go crazy watching the game.

So whether you lace up skates yourself , or you just cheer on your own favourite team out on the ice, I invite you to celebrate the good old hockey game, and celebrate with me the country that started it all – to hockey, in Canada!

Million Dollar Dreams

I read a story over the last year by Stuart McLean. McLean hosts the Vinyl Café on CBC Radio, and he has also written a collection of books under the same name detailing the life stories of one particular family headed by Dave and Morley, and they have two children; Sam and Stephanie.

The Extreme Vinyl Café is the name of this particular book, and “The Winning Lottery Ticket” is the story I speak of. This story is about the grandfather of Stephanie’s boyfriend, who keeps an unscratched lottery ticket, and always claims it to be “a winning ticket”. He would always ask his family: “Imagine. A million dollars. What would you do with a million dollars?” And then when whoever it was he was asking told him, he would listen carefully, and then respond: “Are you sure that’s what you would do? Is that your heart’s desire? And then the process would start all over again.” Ever since I read that story, I have put some thought into answering that grandfather’s question; what would I do if I won the lottery?

Like I do about almost everything, I started to research and analyze. And I tried to figure out what I would do with my money Logically. A very good article I read online explained things very well. It asked you, the reader, to think about the work you want to be doing, and the money you realistically think you would earn over your career. Then multiply that by the duration of your career.

I think my amount translated into something like $2.1M.
Okay! So, THAT’S my cap. That’s as much as I’d ever want to win. Having this cap allows you to stay grounded, envisioning your goals in a lifestyle that you are already working towards, with the added bonus of the lottery helping you get there right away.

Let’s get realistic about this here, I’m never going to win $2.1M. So Logically, let’s not even imagine that. 1M dollars! I’m going to win 1M dollars! What am I going to do with that? What would YOU do with $1M?

For me, that question was easy. First, I would be giving 10% of it away to charities; there are several different ones that have touched my life over the years, either directly or through the lives of family and friends. I would divide the money up, not send it to only one, and not all at once. But that’s only some of the money anyway!

I would pay off my Mother’s mortgage. I would give money to my sister, my Family, and my friends.

There is a reason I would do these things. I believe we all have so many connections, so many people to whom we owe our gratitude, and our time. We cannot begin to know in our lifetime how many people gave so many hours of their time to help out each and every one of us.

I am sure that we all hear our friends and family talk about different of their dreams, and that I’m sure we’d love to be able to help them out. But over time, we kind of turn ourselves off of that, because we know there’s “nothing we can do” and that’s just life. But there are so many ways we could help each other out, and a huge part of the joy of winning the lottery is being able to share it, and to give of yourself, and doing this becomes part of that dream!

So, after I have shared with others, what am I left with? About half my winnings. Okay! I would use the rest of it to buy a condo for myself, I would get a cat, use a room in my new condo for woodworking projects, and that’s about it.

The more I thought about winning that million dollars, and what I would do with it, the more I thought about the time it would buy me, and how I would invest that time into making myself a better person. I would work with a career coach, spend more time volunteering, take some courses on gourmet cooking and I’d even improve my communication skills!

Then I realized that this dream is not about winning the money … although I do admit, that would be nice … really, nice! Okay, so this dream is – at least in part – about winning the money!

*But before I get there, it’s about creating goals for the future that can only be attained by having that money, and then, in place of my winnings, figuring out what I can do to get myself towards those goals without having that spare cash. This comes in the form of helping others out in their lives, achieving personal and financial goals, and becoming a better person.

Who knows, WHEN I win this one million dollars, I will at least have … well … believed in this dream, & worked towards it; that silly little dream that’s just for fun. I will have let myself have a “heart’s desire”, and be a much better person for it.

After all, “Money? Well, money can cause no end of problems. It’s far better to stick with dreams.”