For more than 30 years, the
Toronto Community Foundation (TCF) has been highlighting Toronto's social and economic challenges, and supporting the organizations and people working to address them.
They also throw a hell of a party.
Last Wednesday morning, more than 350 people converged at CBC's Glenn Gould Studio to celebrate the TFC's annual Vital Toronto Celebration. Hosted by Matt Galloway of CBC's
Metro Morning, the event interwove speeches, award presentations, a drumming performance by Lawrence Heights Middle School students and a conversation with Shawn Micallef, journalist, author and former
Yonge Street editor, on Toronto: The Loveable City.
The celebration was in honour of the 40 individuals and organizations awarded money in the past year from TCF's
Vital Fund. While the grant recipients run the gamut from a theatre collective to
Hospice Toronto, they are all, as TFC president and CEO Rahul Bhardwaj, says, "committed to improving Toronto's vital signs."
Every year the foundation documents Toronto's successes and challenges, producing its
Toronto Vital Signs Report, which guides TCF's investment strategy for the coming year. Over the 2011/2012 period, TCF awarded 40 Vital Toronto grants totalling more than $600,000.
Bhardwaj says the event was about more than plaque distribution and pats-on-the-back.
"[These events] are an opportunity to bring [city-builders] together and celebrate them individually as organizations and also, maybe more importantly," he says, "we get them all together so they all get charged on the collective story of transformation that all their good work is doing."
Full list of grantees
here.
Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Rahul Bhardwaj, President & CEO, Toronto Community Foundation