(Header photo by Brendan Albert Photography)
Well, wasn’t that fun!
On behalf of Centre for Social Innovation and the village that created An Honest Farewell, I want to say thank you so much for joining us. Over 15,000 of us shared an experience of saying goodbye and processing the change of a Toronto without Honest Ed’s. This elicited so many memories, stories and emotions including both joy and sadness. Here’s a sample of pictures that capture the magic and the Toronto Star’s recap of the event can be found here.
There is of course so much more documentation that we’ll share across our channels over the next period but we wanted to follow up quickly and communicate our next steps.
Feedback and Learnings
We’d love to know what you thought of the event whether you went or not so that we can learn from our mistakes and build on our successes, especially as it relates to how inclusive you felt it was. Your feedback will contribute towards a follow up report that we will be creating and publicly sharing in the coming months.
We would appreciate any time you can take to share your feedback with us here.
The form provides the option to be anonymous but if you have feedback that you would like a direct response on, please email inclusivity@torontoforeveryone.com.
What’s Next
Our focus this week is on reconciling all the event pieces, sharing stories about the experience and creating space for feedback from different voices.
Our focus over the next several months is on processing our learnings and your feedback, which we will share via a report (also, we’re taking to take a bit of rest!).
Our focus this year is on creating the programs, opportunities and events for you to join us in the Toronto for Everyone campaign, which is our invitation to co-create an inclusive city with us and our community.
This last part can take many forms. We don’t see ourselves as the experts on inclusive city building. Our role will be to leverage our privilege to provide a platform and resources to support the people who are experts – those who have the professional and lived experience in this field. You will hear much more about this in the coming months, via our social media channels or if you sign up for our newsletter here.
The Toronto for Everyone Fund + How to be an Ally
Finally, An Honest Farewell has provided us with an opportunity to ask for you to join us in co-creating an inclusive city, but this work has already been underway.
Many of our members have been providing education on how you learn about allyship for different communities. There are more How to Be An Ally workshops coming up soon, and you can learn more about them here.
You can also donate to the Toronto for Everyone Fund, which will be used to fund more education on topics of allyship, inclusion and equity. We believe education is an essential building block of an inclusive city, and that by providing people with the tools and understanding they need to stand with all marginalized communities, we get a lot closer to creating a Toronto for Everyone.
We are pleased to announce that we have raised $25,000 to date!
Whether $25, $50 or $250, your donation will improve more and more people’s lives.
Final Gratitude
An Honest Farewell was created by a community of staff, volunteers, artists, organizations, partners and sponsors. It was our co-created gift for Toronto and we feel privileged and grateful to have had this opportunity, and that you took the time to be a part of it. Thank you.
To the community who made this happen, there are hundreds of you that were directly involved in some way (our last estimate was 700) and we appreciate you so much. You proved that when different people are invited to the table, we are all better for it. Thank you.
And to Honest Ed’s, inclusive of the Mirvish family and all of the staff, you made our city better through your generous actions and welcoming spirit. You put community first and we hope you saw this as our attempt to say thank you.
Thank you for providing your own magic to this event, and bringing truth to the phrase that there is indeed, No Place Like This Place, Any Place.
Adil
Executive Director of CSI
#TO4E
