Now the project will come full circle as the chaplaincy distributes around 100 sandwiches and winter clothing packages, including the Advent socks, directly to the homeless.
On Dec. 17 and 18, volunteers will package clothes, hygiene products and food during the day at the St. Michael’s Cathedral parish hall to distribute to people on the streets in the downtown core between Bathurst and Parliament from College to Queen Streets in the evenings.
The original idea of a sock drive was pitched by Oriana Bertucci, the director of Catholic chaplaincy at Ryerson University.
Allison Belen, 25, a second-year mature student at Ryerson and an executive on the Catholic chaplaincy team, learned about the need for socks from a course she took on homelessness in Canada. The need for shoes and socks comes from the fact that homeless individuals walk “entire days” and they wear them out faster than most people, Belen said.
“It is highly unlikely that folks living on the streets have easy access to weather-appropriate winter footwear.
Especially in the winter months, it is easy for them to suffer from frostbite and infections on their feet,” said Belen.
“New, thick, warm socks help with a little bit of support and added warmth, and also double as mittens to protect their hands from the winter cold.”
Taking what she learned from the class, Belen looked around for a partner to whom she could donate socks and eventually found mental health support worker Dennis McDermott and Feed the Need, a grassroots organization supporting the homeless population in Toronto.
McDermott and his colleague began Feed the Need when they realized that they each were already doing similar outreach projects.
“We started talking about starting it up as an actual functioning program and currently proceeding on that mission,” McDermott said.
According to a report from the Canadian Homelessness Research Network and the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, there are at least 30,000 homeless in Canada in temporary shelters and on the streets every night. In the city of Toronto, that number is more than 5,000, according to city estimates. In contrast, there are around 3,700 shelter beds available in the city. The number of homeless individuals living on the streets in Toronto increased by 24 per cent over the past four years.
McDermott says that most people ignore the growing problem because they aren’t affected by homelessness.
“Most of us will go from work to school to home and in between we don’t see the bigger picture. In that bigger picture are the finer invisible details, in those details are the homeless,” he said.
Both Belen and McDermott say the response from the Ryerson community has been overwhelming.
“Our partnered efforts to support our fellow brothers and sisters living on the streets has sparked not only gracious generosity from our communities, but also critical dialogue and awareness of an issue irrefutably on our own campus doorstep,” said Belen.
McDermott added that they have received “more than enough” socks from Ryerson students and faculty.
Belen said the Advent project is one way that people can respond and follow Jesus’ example.
“Jesus, Himself, was a man living in homelessness; He had no home on Earth. He was not of this world. He reminds us that it is our Christian call to live our lives full of love and compassion for one another.”
McDermott says that Feed The Need is still accepting winter clothing and food donations and is seeking volunteers for its outreach days.
For more information on Feed the Need, e-mail make8difference@gmail.com or search “Feed the Need” on Facebook.
(Chen, 20, is a journalism student at Ryerson University in Toronto.)