Shelley Alward-MacLeod 0:00
Hello and Welcome to Season Two of within our reach, a podcast all about accessibility, inclusion and leveling the playing field at work and in our community. I'm Shelley Alward MacLeod, and I'm joined by my co host, Blake Hunsley, and today we're joined by Caralee McDaniel, who is here to tell us all about the great work being done by North Grove, a fellow community support organization based in Dartmouth. And I think this is the first time where it's a Dartmouth based show.

Blake Hunsley 0:30
You can hear the eye rolls coming from the Halifax based crew. Thank you for coming across the bridge to join us. That was cruel, making everyone

Blake Hunsley 0:41
come

Blake Hunsley 0:42
from Dartmouth across here something and call them.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 0:46
Yeah, so. So. C aralee, welcome, thank you. Why don't we start by, you know you, you know, introducing yourself, okay, and I know you're a long time employee of North Grove, but why don't you tell us about yourself and give us the North Grove. What

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 1:04
you do?

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 1:04
A little

Caralee McDaniel 1:05
rundown. Okay, well, thank you for having me here. This is exciting. And I think we're all like, definitely from Dartmouth, but pretty much some like neighbors, basically,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 1:15
yeah, exactly.

Caralee McDaniel 1:18
So, yes, I have been there really long time. I've been there for started in fall of 2000 but before that, and this is one of the driving reasons why I wanted to work there, I was a participant at the Family Resource programming with my two daughters, who are now grown ups, one of whom has her own child, my four year old granddaughter. So I'm originally from Cape, Breton. I didn't grow up here, so when I moved up here for university, and you know, had my my first daughter, for sure, I didn't know a lot of people, especially a lot of people with families, and I had no family myself here, so I was like, I'm going to be raising this little being, I need a support network. And that's when I found what was then called the Dartmouth family resource center, which had started in like 94 and so, you know, I went to prenatal I went to play groups, parenting programs, and it really just had such an impact on my life. I made lifelong friends that I still, you know, have today. I felt such support when I was uncertain about, you know, something around parenting or just even personal development. I had staff and peers that I could go to and like, what do you think? What am I? What should I do? That kind of a thing? And what I think, what was really unique was also that ability to share my own knowledge and experiences and find that that was really valued by the staff there. They didn't present as the people who know it all and know everything, they really took into account our personal experiences. So those are the things that really struck me then, and in 2000 we had a pilot home visiting program called growing together, and it really was meant to be a peer neighborhood model, so moms in the community with various life experiences were hired. So I was really excited about that opportunity, because I felt like, I want to, you know, give back. I know some people don't necessarily like that term. That's how I thought of it. I learned so much, I got so much support, that I thought, I think I'm in a good position now to be able to offer that to other people. Nice. So I was hired in 2000 for that role, and I've been in various roles ever since,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 3:54
nice,

Blake Hunsley 3:55
what you're the hub manager now is that,

Caralee McDaniel 3:57
yeah, what

Blake Hunsley 3:58
exactly does that? Because I know the hub does a lot.

Caralee McDaniel 4:00
Yeah, it sounds kind of vague, too, I think. But no, I

Blake Hunsley 4:03
for profit jobs do because we all do everything.

Speaker 2 4:05
We all

Speaker 1 4:05
do everything exactly. So what I do now for the past couple of years, it is a new position as of, I guess, three years ago now, as we started to grow as a hub and realize that we, you know, we don't have the expertise to do some of the things that people are asking of us, we started to invite partners in. So, you know, for instance, Nova Scotia, Legal Aid comes weekly and sees, sees families, particularly about like family law and job protection law. So they've been a long time partner even, you know, before my role, but it is that sort of a thing, like, I'm in charge of our partnerships, but I'm also always seeking partners to, I guess, fill the gaps in, in what people tell us they need and want as services and as programs. So we have, we have partners, let's just say, like Nova Scotia, legal aid, Dalhousie Legal Aid, community health team are fabulous partners of ours for both programs. And you know, coming to a drop in breakfast and meeting folks in their wellness navigation role, we've had a partnership with the Nova Scotia brotherhood and sisterhood, so before their doctors and their staff moved to the new clinic, which is at wyse road, the new Primary Health Care Clinic. Their doctors saw people from our site once a month as they rotate throughout the community to serve the African Nova Scotian community. So yeah, we've had some great partnerships. And, you know, are always looking for more. So that that's my job.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 5:41
So, so I you started, you know, by saying that, you know, it first started in 1994

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 5:48
and

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 5:49
kind of gave us a little but then maybe walk us through, like, you know, the iteration. I want to hear the rest of the story,

Caralee McDaniel 5:56
yeah,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 5:57
as to, like, all the different things that you offer?

Caralee McDaniel 6:00
Yes, okay,

Blake Hunsley 6:01
I'm curious too about what those services have, how the services changed over 25 years. And as you know, again, big fans of Dartmouth, how you've seen our community change?

Caralee McDaniel 6:10
Yeah, so, so I guess my involvement probably began in 96 but the Resource Center did start in 94 and it was, I describe it as a movement, a family resource center movement, across the province. So I think currently there are still, like 26 family resource centers throughout the province, most of them, if not all, would have started early to mid 90s, and a common funder that was one of, probably, maybe the original funder is now the Public Health Agency of Canada, what was then Health Canada and under the program that we call cap C so the Children's Action Program, oh my gosh, community action program for children, sorry. So they were original funder and are still a funder today. Nice. And so in those intervening years, one of our now biggest funder is the Department of opportunities and social development, which community services, I think, for most folks who, yeah, I still think of them as that sometimes. So they're probably, I believe they are our biggest funder for the family programs. So I guess, just to to go back to when I was hired, I mentioned it was a pilot home visiting program called growing together, which then, I guess, kind of morphed into in 2005 public health services started provincially a home visiting program as part of their early years program area, and they modeled a lot of the principles on the growing together project. And then some, some programs from the US and Hawaii Healthy Start, I believe it was called so we at the Center, like our growing together morphed into this home visiting program, and then it It started in other areas, like all over the province, in HRM, or what was then Central Zone, home visitors were housed in family resource centers. And the idea for that is because of all of the wraparound services that would be available in other parts of the province, they the home visitors work out of public health offices, but still, to this day, we host the Healthy Beginnings home visiting program.

Blake Hunsley 8:36
Okay,

Caralee McDaniel 8:37
so I was with that from for several years, and that program supports families prenatally and with children up to three years of age. And so it's really like a health promotion, maybe like a slightly early intervention, but it really focuses on supporting parents to help their children develop optimally. And, you know, around attachment and around like how important play is and what children are learning, sort of like, incidentally, while you're also having fun. So we still have that program, and all of our in house programs, like, you know, some of the programs have changed of course over the time, but the idea is still the same. We offer a prenatal program and some postnatal like infant massage family play groups, which is a wonderful way for families new to the community or new to us to come and get acquainted with us. So instead of signing up for like a workshop on maybe toilet learning or a six week program, and not really knowing what we are, who we are. Families enjoy coming and staying with their children in the family, in the play space, and so, you know, they get to know the staff, they get to know the area, and they also just see how much fun their children are having and what they're learning. Just through play. It's a beautiful space. If you ever want to come over for a tour, we'd love to have you. So I'm probably starting to ramble a little bit if you need to redirect me to the questions

Blake Hunsley 10:12
best episodes are the ones we barely hear from Shelly and I at all.

Caralee McDaniel 10:19
Okay, yes, I might. I might lose tangents. Or do you lose focus? So tend Tell me, tell me if I have. So, yeah, so I guess we so in that, you know, in the like, since the 2000s when I've joined, we've also gained another home visiting program that is funded by OSD through their prevention and early intervention stream of programming and the parenting journey works with families with young children, but they can also work with families who are just having difficulties, and they can have children up to basically graduation from grade 12.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 11:02
Okay,

Caralee McDaniel 11:02
yeah, which is really interesting, because some what we always used to hear, we used to be really had programming, mostly for preschool, and so families would come back after their children start a school, and they're like, we still want to participate here. We still need support. And these were the days, you know, before schools plus and all the supports now available. So the parenting journey really gives support to families who, you know, who are all of a sudden thrown into those pre teen or teen years, which can

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 11:34
be literally tough. That's what I was just thinking. It's like preschool, and then,

Caralee McDaniel 11:39
right, yeah,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 11:40
all the ages to

Blake Hunsley 11:41
abandon them and say, figure

Caralee McDaniel 11:43
it out, right? So, yeah. So I think I think if Andrea, our coordinator of the home visiting programs, are here, she would probably say that we don't have a lot of families with children in that maybe like 14 to 18 range, but certainly around that pre and early teen and that program is described as an Early Intervention Support Program, so they have a lot of folks on their caseload, as we call it, who do have involvement with child protection,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 12:16
so

Caralee McDaniel 12:16
either as a supervision order, or in some cases, children have been removed from the care. So it's a really important program to support family reunification.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 12:26
Yes,

Caralee McDaniel 12:27
and, and where it is funded by OSD, you know they also, they're also the stream that has the child protection, so it's really, it's a really great way to work together to support that reunification for for families,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 12:42
yeah,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 12:42
sure, consistency,

Caralee McDaniel 12:43
sure, consistency, exactly.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 12:45
Nice,

Caralee McDaniel 12:46
yeah, yeah, exactly.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 12:47
And then you do some things around food I think food security,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 12:51
yeah. So the Community Food Center just celebrated 10 years

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 12:57
I thought, yeah, 10 years

Speaker 3 12:58
August. I know it's flown by, and food has always been a really important aspect of all family resource centers. We know that, you know, parents need support, yes, perhaps information around parenting and opportunities to learn and grow and share with each other, but food security has always been an issue, you know, in neighborhoods like ours, and so we've always provided food on a smaller scale. So if you were ever coming to a program or a workshop or an event, food was always a piece of that we always fed you with the Community Food Center, we are able to feed folks on a different scale. And one of the things that we noticed sort of in those years when we didn't have a food center, and we had moved to a location on Albert Lake Road, we had lots of people coming in to see us for various reasons, even if it might be to use the phone or to send a fax or for information purposes. And so it became, I think we always knew, but it just became more apparent to us that a lot of people were struggling. So around that time, we heard of an organization that I think was fairly new at that time, Community Food centers Canada, who've recently changed their name to right right to food. They were they had transformed a food bank in in an area of Toronto, into a community food center. And then a couple of others had opened up in Ontario, I think, Perth and Stratford, and they were looking to explore an opportunity in the Maritimes. And we heard they were coming down. We made kind of cold call, contact, cold email and said, hey, you know, we heard we'd love to chat with you. We'd love to meet you, tell you, tell us, or tell you about our organization, about our community. And they were really super interested. So they came. They toured the community. You know, this probably would have been maybe 2012 I want to say. Yeah, and they did invite us to apply to be a partner. So it was a whole proposal piece. It was, I want to say, late that fall in 2012 we had to have it in just before our Christmas break. So we were, there were three of us working on the different aspects of it, and we got to get this in. And then we came back in the new year to basically, like a phone message that was, like, we want to partner with you. We want to put the first Atlantic Community Food Center in Dartmouth North nice. We were thrilled. But then it became okay, where, where are we going to like, can we build it? Like, is there space anywhere that we can use? So that was, you know, then the work began in earnest. We had a lot of supporters, including Mayor savage at the time, and he really helped us kind of warm those lines with Sobeys, who still, who at that point, had built a brand new Sobeys on wyse road, so a little further down in the community. But the building we're in now, at six Primrose, had been a Sobeys for probably 40 years. Yeah, that's right. So a smaller sobes, like, you know, kind of a community Sobeys, some of the Lawtons is also there and still remains, and there were some other businesses, but the bulk of it was the Sobeys. And so most of it was empty this big space. And so just so it took us, obviously, you know, another couple of years. We opened August 2015 so between finding out in early 2013 I think it was all of that work and, you know, a capital campaign, which was something really new to us. As a family resource center, we had stable funding. We didn't really have to do much in the way of fundraising. You know, we might write grants, like smaller grants for projects. So this really opened up a new a new avenue for us, but also a whole new world of fundraising. So our board, I applaud them to this day, for taking on such a big endeavor. So, you know, 10 years later, we've been really successful. We had a great capital campaign. We were able to, you know, build that community food center in the old Sobeys. We have a beautiful, big dining room, an open concept commercial kitchen where the food's prepared and just, you know, have gained we've grown a lot. Staff wise, we have, like, a fun development and communications team that also, like, helps tell the stories that I think really resonate with people. We have, like, a variety of fundraising, fundraising initiatives, I guess, a monthly donor program. We have foundational funding. We still have our government funding, United Way funding. So we're really we're really lucky, really grateful that we have the supporters that we do, that have continued to help us grow, and that we've been able to, you know, serve community meals for 10 years, have a market for 10 years that's highly subsidized, very low cost, market, not

Blake Hunsley 18:21
Community Farm now, as well as

Caralee McDaniel 18:23
we have a community farm that was that has grown like since that first year. We've always had gardens, and they've pretty much like grown over the last 10 years. So we have garden beds that we use that produce in our meals and give it away to the community. And we also have community plots that folks in the community can grow their own food. Yeah, yeah. So, so

Blake Hunsley 18:48
healthy for the young kids, especially too, like, yeah. I always think of this story, we were dog sitting on bilby street over and over in the north end,

Caralee McDaniel 18:56
okay?

Blake Hunsley 18:56
And the folks who owned this home had a lovely little garden, garden plot in front of their house, and they just let people who came by take whatever they wanted from it. They weren't really using it. It was just, you know, just, I love these little independent thoughts people have where there's like, I will

Caralee McDaniel 19:10
do, yeah,

Blake Hunsley 19:11
you know, this little food security program that's yeah, takes just one person sort

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 19:14
of thing.

Blake Hunsley 19:15
But we heard a family, a very young family, out front, and when we were inside, and we heard one of the kids say, What's this? And the mother was explaining what a tomato was, because the kid was unfamiliar with what a growing tomato looks like and what it looks like ripening and everything. So to be able to have, not only the food security programs to support people in while in learning, I mean, in teaching all these family skills, we always say around here, we serve hot lunches, because you cannot learn on empty stomach

Caralee McDaniel 19:41
system, but

Blake Hunsley 19:42
with the community firm, you must be giving a whole new experience of education to these kids. I mean, I hadn't thought, as someone who grew up, you know, among turnip trucks out in the countryside,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 19:50
yeah, yeah.

Blake Hunsley 19:50
That wasn't that. That wasn't a gap in my knowledge, right? It was quite shocking to hear that there were urban kids who didn't know anything about where food actually came from.

Caralee McDaniel 19:58
Yeah, yeah. So that. But so true. So the other lovely piece about our garden and farm area, we have a big, beautiful play yard adjacent to the farm beds, so the kids in good weather, like anytime now, spend a lot of time in the play yard, in for the programs and play groups and the summer half day camps. So they're right beside the garden, so there's lots of opportunity for them to be in the garden and to explore what's growing, be able to pick the things that are ready and to we have in the garden as well. We have a lot of I guess, what I'd describe as like international foods. We have a really diverse community, as you both would know, especially since covid. And so with the market, you know, we've had people say like, we'd love to see this growing, or we'd love to have access to this particular produce that you know, we can't easily get. And so the garden folks have started to grow a large variety of different produce, so that also, like people, not just children, but can see, like their traditional or cultural foods, like reflected in the space as well, nice and, yeah,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 21:11
and, you know, with the kids, I'm, you know, I'm just thinking about that, like Children, okay, learn what they see, right? But seeing food growing in that way as a child, right? It then becomes part of, you know, perhaps something that you take on with you and continue to

Caralee McDaniel 21:31
I would think so, like you. Blake, I grew up in the country on, you know, with a stepdad who had big gardens. And, you know, we sold things to the co op and on the side of the road. Sadly, I didn't pay a lot of attention to that. I often helped dig potatoes and stuff like that. But I am so sorry now that I missed that opportunity to like from the planting and the turning of the earth process, because you're so right. Like living in this, like, my kids have not really had that experience living in the city. And so, yes, we have a lot of kids, and they're super interested, like, I mean, kids are just sponges. They're just interested in everything. And so our child development team of three, you know, provides, like, just beautiful experiences. But then this added experience of being, you know, having a farm and garden accessible is just like such a perk and such a bonus. I

Blake Hunsley 22:29
love that you're growing cultures, more cultural foods, too, from different cultural backgrounds. Because, you know, talking about this poor kid who wasn't familiar with what a tomato looked like growing I don't know what a bunch of different things that I would see at the grocery store now, and don't be using my own cooking that often, necessarily, I wouldn't know how they grow. I'd be getting my own education. Absolutely,

Caralee McDaniel 22:49
one of the really cool things is so we have a food demo every Wednesday morning after our drop in breakfast. And it is wildly popular. It's it's interactive, in the sense that folks, you know, ask questions and things, but folks are actually doing the prep or the cooking. It's almost like a cooking show, okay? We have the mirror where people can see exactly what's happening and talk through so the recipes are always like, nutritious, inexpensive, easy to replicate at home with you don't need fancy equipment, but this is often a place where we have guests, and sometimes they're from our own staff, who are, you know, perhaps originally from another culture, another country, or outside of our work. And they come and they use some of the vegetables that we grow, or some of the things that you would find in the grocery stores now, and show people how to do it, so it's really cool, and then having them available at the market, whether they're they're grown, or whether we purchase them, so we purchase our projects from the mobile food market, so that also supports that program. It's further subsidized, so it's extremely low cost. It's not a social enterprise for us. It's really about food access in our community and so, so for people to come and be able to make a suggestion of, like, I'd love to see this. This is something I, you know, is from home, and I, I really want to be able to use it again. So be to be able to purchase and then like, kind of resell or make available the things that people ask us for or that remind them of home is also such an important, I think, important for belonging, not just for access to food.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 24:30
Well,

Blake Hunsley 24:30
it's funny, because before we always do this, we start talking before we hit record, and then we realize that we should like we were saying before we started the show today, I think it's 40% is the number now of our clients here at reachability that are newcomers, and we're actually starting a program all about belonging for newcomers, because there is such an issue with that finding that feeling of belonging for people who are new to Canada food is so central to that it must be just heartwarming for these people to be able to because there's nothing. There's got to be nothing worse than being homesick and not being able to make your favorite meal from home, because that seems to be the thing that everyone gravitates

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 25:06
you to,

Blake Hunsley 25:06
kind of instantly make themselves feel a little better. That's really a lovely service that you're able to

Caralee McDaniel 25:10
provide. I think food is just a connector, no matter who you are or where you're from, and certainly something that we've learned, like I was going to say, since the food center, but even before that, as a family resource center. You know, people just connect over food. One of the things when we do our yearly surveys, you know, people tell us, yes, my access to healthy food has increased. Yes, I've learned a parenting strategy that kind of a thing. And, you know, the the percentage of the yes answers are always pretty high, thankfully, but right up there, and sometimes more, is that I feel more of a sense of belonging to my community, or, you know, and or I've made friends that, you know, friendships that extend beyond meeting at the food center. So, you know that is just such an important piece, having somewhere where people can connect, like, in a safe, welcoming environment, meet people from like, all over, you know, all demographics, like, just all ages. It's, it's, I mean, I guess I'm biased, but it really is a special place. Yeah, I've

Blake Hunsley 26:25
been there, I agree. It's funny. One of the things we talked about when we were coming up with this, it's called emotional regulation for newcomers. Aaron is the name, and we realized a lot of newcomers being given the advice to get out there and network, to try to meet people, which sounds great like you're telling this to people who are feeling very ungrounded and just don't have any sense of belonging. How are you supposed to send someone out confidently to meet new people when they don't have that so to be able to go bond over an element of their own culture, share that with people, and then take those friendships outside while learning all sorts of all

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 27:00
sorts of

Blake Hunsley 27:00
things that are happening in the community, but also family resources and things that I'm

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 27:05
sure that

Blake Hunsley 27:05
since most people move here without their potential extended family that might have been

Caralee McDaniel 27:09
helping before, and I love that idea of the program, like I can't wait to see

Blake Hunsley 27:13
we're going to be talking

Caralee McDaniel 27:14
Yes, absolutely,

Blake Hunsley 27:16
yeah.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 27:16
What would you say is, you know, you've kind of brought us through the years and now to you know, in the last 10 years, having food or food security, food production, community around food, would you say that's become a more popular part of your organization?

Caralee McDaniel 27:41
Yeah, organization, I would say, yes, yes. Is

Blake Hunsley 27:47
that out of a growth in needs? Do you notice or

Caralee McDaniel 27:49
Yes? I think absolutely. And I think food is such a tangible piece family resource centers, I think you know, from just having an involvement for such a long time, both as a participant and a staff, there has always been a bit of a struggle, maybe not so much now, but a bit of a struggle for folks in all levels of you know, government and people generally, to be able to so we're working with families with young children. We're trying to help in their optimal development and so that they grow healthy and happy and to their full potential. But it's such a long stretch away right to it's such in the future when you've got a two year old that I guess, you know, for people who are focused on results, or, like, you know, quantitative results, it's, it's a stretch, I guess, to maybe imagine that the investment at this early stage is going to, like, you know, to use the term pay off like that. That's not how we talk about it. But you know, for say, like, funders is going to be seen in the future, in this happy, healthy young adult who's now, like, you know, a future leader, potentially. So I think there always was, like, a bit of a struggle to garner, like, lots of mainstream like, people are like, Oh yeah, it's great. Like, family play groups, wonderful, and we know kids are learning and things like that. But I think the food center really helped elevate the Family Resource Center work as well.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 29:32
Yeah, yeah. I'm really, I think it's really an interesting combination, right? Because also, like, from a funding perspective, and we're all in this room here, as would be many of our listeners, well aware of having to talk about the outcomes. Yes,

Blake Hunsley 29:53
you know, it's,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 29:54
you know, when you think about, you know, the. A potty proper potty training, you know, okay, well, what's the outcome? How quick? Like, what? How do we know if it's successful? Like, you know, and you know, what's that funding for that going to do? So the same could be said for a tomato, right? Seeing a tomato grow, okay, like, what? How are we going to prove that there was, like, some great measurable outcome, right? Somebody,

Caralee McDaniel 30:23
right,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 30:24
grew the tomato, picked it, we ate it, yeah, yeah,

Caralee McDaniel 30:27
you're right, yeah.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 30:28
But I like, I really, again, coming from this background, I think that it is so important right, to be able to do these things, right? We don't do them for the measurables. We have to do them in some cases to get the funding, absolutely. But I like how you've done the combination I'm really interested in, you know, hearing about that, like you've tied all the things together, like the family, sort of the parenting journey, the cohesiveness of family, and added that element of food that I think, that you know, as Blake said here at reachability, we're also recognizing, because we're dealing with adults, right, in most cases, that they also can't learn without food. Food is a common denominator, right? And so it's the one thing that kind of levels the playing field, yeah, like you and I were talking before we even started, which was the whole social aspect of having a coffee, like,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 31:34
right? You

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 31:34
know, you know, the comfort of holding onto a warm cup of coffee. I think the same could be said for food, bringing the parties together. And it sounds like, Absolutely, your program more robust?

Speaker 4 31:49
Yeah, absolutely. It has just to go back to your comment too, about, like, I don't know if you called it a unique combination of, like, a family resource center and a food center, if you go across Canada. So right to food is the organization that we are part of. So there are, I think, 18 Community Food centers, including one in Iqaluit, one in Eel Ground First Nation in northern New Brunswick, and then through, you know, across from sea to sea to sea, I guess they say so they're all different. I believe it's Calgary. It's called the Alex they opened a food center that's attached to their community health center. So if you went all over the place, you might find a standalone Community Food Center. You'd find one attached to, as I mentioned, the health center. I don't know if there are any attached to a family resource center like ours, but we, yeah, we felt extremely lucky to be the ones chosen to do this. And it really like it was never sort of the long term plan as a family resource center. But I think, like one thing that, and if I'm getting off topic, bring me back. I think one thing that has really maybe kept us like, relevant in the community. You know, we've been there a long time. People seem to trust us, but we've always tried to respond and take advantage of opportunities that have arisen. So, like, really, when we first heard like, we had never heard of community food centers Canada before. I can't even remember who like the initial like, who said it, but when we looked we were like, this community would so benefit from this, and we would be able to serve, like, the broad population in our community, not just families with preschool children. Yeah, right.

Blake Hunsley 33:41
That's a very smart move too, because it solves two issues a lot of non for profits have, aside from the whole just general food insecurity in our community, it gets people in the door, because there's always going to be people who need your services, but might be reluctant to admit that they could use a little help with parenting. They could use a little family support, and then they find out there's a hot lunch that day they don't have to cook for the kids, and it's more and it's more likely to get them in. But the other one is that sense of belonging. We keep talking about, like you can bring everybody in your doors. You can give them absolutely everything that they need, but you need something to unite them around to some sort of common conversational topic, if nothing else. And food, food seems to work for everybody. So I think that was you said luck, and I'm going to call you on that. I think it was, I think it was smart. I think it was a very smart play on your part. And having seen a bit of how North Grove has grown over the years and seen all of the community partners that you folks work with, I think credit words do. I think the North Grove has picked your community partners very well, and I think you've expanded in a very smart way, the fact that you're operating still and still growing and still maintaining the programs you've had all along. I think that all speaks to that. So sorry to throw that word luck out.

Caralee McDaniel 34:48
I appreciate that like I do think. I think that, like, sometimes, you know, I think we're all really humble about our work because I, you know, we're here because. We, all of us, are in nonprofit, are here because we really believe in what we do. And I think that tends to make us humble, which is not, you know, not always a bad thing. But I appreciate that. I do think that when you when you are very intentional, you know, sort of from beginning to to end of like, even hiring staff and coming up with your guiding principles and the things that you value, and when you can really like, live by those, I think that's when people trust you. Like, we know it's hard, like, it's hard for me to walk in a new door sometimes, of like, I don't really know what to expect, how I'm going to be welcomed. So those are the things that we really like. That welcoming for us. It's like, probably the biggest piece that somebody is always on hand to welcome you, whether you have been with us for a long time, or whether you're someone new walking through the door, we want that sense of you are important to us. You know, come join us. Get your needs met. Come join us. Volunteer with us, like, just be who you are and come join us. It

Blake Hunsley 36:15
takes a lot of guts to walk into a new space, even if you know when you walk through that door, you're gonna get something that you need,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 36:20
yeah,

Blake Hunsley 36:21
especially if you're new to a community or new to a country, like no, no, I think that's it's very difficult, and it's good to give people credit when they do that. So I'm glad they're getting credit and a warm welcome. Yeah, that's what we strive for here,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 36:34
you know. And I think that you know other you know, kudos to organizations that stay relevant. Because I think that's key as well. And you talked about that is that, not, you know, not just stagnating where an organization does this period, we have to keep doing that, because we've seen over the years a lot of things happen, right? Yeah, changes of funding, changes of community makeup, like, you know, we, you talked about, like, in, you know, in Dartmouth North and where I am in East Dartmouth, we're seeing the same thing is this, especially since covid, yeah, this huge influx, okay, of newcomers, yeah, right. And that's, you know, allowed us to be able to really look at, how are we delivering services? Right? The same here, you know, as Blake talked about a reachability really, you know, adding new programs right that relate to newcomers, and so organizations can only stay relevant. And that's kind of the beauty about not for profits, is that we do have that ability to still, you know, be true to our guiding principles, but be able to pivot for what's needed in our community. And I really like how you said that, like across Canada, in different organizations, it's going to look different because it's what's necessary for that community. So that's very, very exciting, very exciting times. And

Blake Hunsley 38:04
speaking about that ability to pivot, I'm curious what is coming next for North Grove, because you've come so far. I'm sure there's exciting things coming in the future. So I wonder if there's any that you can kind of shed light on now, or is it all

Blake Hunsley 38:17
TBD,

Blake Hunsley 38:18
big surprises down the road?

Caralee McDaniel 38:20
Well, I think what I can say is that, so a few years back, I want to say, Guess, starting maybe 2021, we started working on strategic directions. So we purposely didn't call it plan, because we wanted, like, maybe, maybe maybe we're going to go this way, but we're going to find out we need to take a veer off this way.

Blake Hunsley 38:45
Need to remain flexible

Speaker 5 38:46
Exactly. So those strategic directions were set for like 2022 to 25 so, you know, I think we've some of those key components were, how do we reach folks like, like, newcomers in our community, what is it that folks want from us? So I think we did a com this is, that's where my role came from, actually, right? The realization that we cannot do, we don't have the expertise to do everything that people like, want and need. So this, my role was born into like, Okay, we need, let's, let's look at our partnerships and grow them. And so I think we did make some good headway, but we are in, in the middle, maybe probably closer toward the end, of our next strategic plan. And this is actually a plan. I feel like we learned a lot through covid. We learned a lot in those strategic directions, and now we're so we will be. We've done focus groups throughout our our community, so with partners, other service providers, and then specific populations. So we did seniors, African Nova Scotia n, indigenous, for. Families with young children. So trying to be comprehensive in meeting with folks and like, what is it that you, first of all, like, what do you what do you see us as? What have you liked? Like, what do we need to do? So those haven't been unveiled yet, so I can't really, like, discuss any further with that, but we will be reporting back to community as well. Like, this is what we heard. This is what what we're hoping. How does it, how does it resonate?

Blake Hunsley 40:25
I'm not surprised to hear seniors come up, because I know personally, from a lot of my friends too and own family, we're

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 40:34
in

Blake Hunsley 40:34
the age now where some of us have young kids, a lot of us have parents that are at the house a lot more. And you know, that's become more of the family theme that we need family community support for Blake,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 40:46
I hate

Blake Hunsley 40:46
to break

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 40:47
it to you. You also are getting closer every year to being a senior. So the new progressives Listen,

Blake Hunsley 40:54
I am,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 40:56
oh, okay,

Blake Hunsley 40:58
I am already officially old enough to join the elderberries gay senior group in town. I have no idea what mixed feelings I have on that

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 41:06
but

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 41:06
becoming a huge

Caralee McDaniel 41:08
Yes,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 41:09
a huge component, and I think as as more and more seniors are going to be probably staying at home, yes, right, so that means they're going to be staying in our community, but they're going to need activities that are very different to what we saw before, right, to keep them active and healthy. So I'm interested, yeah, interested to hear what you unveil about, about that, yeah, well, get your newsletter. So, oh, good. Okay,

Caralee McDaniel 41:40
I can share with you, though. So we have just finished, like, a year long project that was funded by age friendly communities provincially and New Horizons federally, where we we did some round tables and some programming and sessions for seniors. And we have just launched, in conjunction with Healthy Minds cooperative in downtown Dartmouth, a new project. So they received funding from New Horizons. And there our focus was, was pretty broad, like in the round tables, it was like, what are you what are you seeing? What do you want to see? What are the issues you're experiencing? So, you know, we heard a huge range, including, you know, some clinical pieces that we weren't able to make inroads on just yet, but some things like foot care and being like hard to access, both financially and, you know, just being able to get an appointment or someone to come into your home. So ranged from there to like, you know, knowledge and awareness sessions, like we did brain health with the Alzheimer's Society. Did several programs with the Dartmouth community health team. They have a great four week optimal aging. Really popular. We did a seniors Expo last, last fall, I guess, yeah, last fall where we had like, 14 service providers come in, and then seniors, you know, got to talk to them, and got information, and we had some great snacks. And then a day trip, which I have to say, is probably the most popular thing we've maybe ever done. We went to Memory Lane village, which is Eastern Shore Lake

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 43:26
Charlotte.

Blake Hunsley 43:26
Okay,

Speaker 6 43:27
so it's a recreation of a 1940s coastal village, I think, including staff, no, I think there were 33 participants and a few staff, a company. We rented a bus, went down there. So it's just under an hour drive, so it's kind of a perfect kind of, you know, not too long. And it was so cool to see people like, as we went through, like, reminisce, even from when they were children, and, you know, like the old saw mill, the ringer washer, like the the ice box, and the rep like the old house, and just share their stories of growing up, you know, and their parents and and just the day trip, right? Like some people told us, like they just don't have those opportunities, and that, you know, maybe they're offered by other organizations, but cost can be prohibitive. So this was free. We, you know, the brand allowed us to pay for the whole thing. We had lunch in the Cook house. It was such a fun day. Then the driver took us, you know, we went out the highway. The driver took us back, like the scenic route that ended up coming by Lawrencetown. So like, you know, some we had some folks new to the country, like new to our community, but newcomers, you know, who hadn't yet been to the beach. So, yeah, so those were really, it was really, it was really neat that we got to do different things. Some of the things, like I said, we weren't able to, like, change or make headway on, but we have some opportunities, I think, coming up that I can't. Say too much about yet around those clinical pieces. Yeah, yeah.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 45:05
Listeners,

Blake Hunsley 45:08
on that note, because unfortunately, as always happens to us, we are Yeah. I do want to ask two final questions I know. One is, how can people stay informed about what's happening at the North Grove individuals who want to come in and take advantage of these services. And the other is community partners, businesses, organizations that want to support North Oh yeah, can they ideally do that as well?

Caralee McDaniel 45:30
Okay, so we have a great website, so folks can donate straight from the website, if it's like a monetary we have lots of like in kind support. We have a community trading cupboard where folks can bring in things they have at home, like non perishable food or personal, like diapers and things that they don't need anymore, trade for items that they want. So we have, you know, folks do food drives for us. You can find out everything on our website. You can apply to be a volunteer on our website. I do have to, if I can, just give a big shout out to our volunteers. We have about 180 active volunteers through the whole center, and they just won a group award from the HRM volunteer. Yeah, yeah. Congratulations. That was just announced. Our volunteers are amazing. A lot of them are our participants and folks in the community, yeah. And so it's, they're a great group. So sorry I got off. Remind me,

Blake Hunsley 46:31
that's wonderful. The other question was, how can, how can people just really say,

Caralee McDaniel 46:36
yeah, yeah. So we also have really active social media if folks just want to, you know, so on Facebook and on Instagram the North Grove, but folks can sign up for our newsletter, and that's done once a month, and our monthly program calendar is always included in that. And then, you know, there's, like, some blogs done on there. We have a great comms team, and so that information is all available on the website, perfect. And

Blake Hunsley 47:01
I presume people can just and I presume people can just drop in for community meals. I

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 47:06
have

Blake Hunsley 47:06
dropped in myself to say I learned a wealth of information very short visit. So highly recommend one

Caralee McDaniel 47:13
other thing. Sorry, I know. So we do have, like, you know, beautiful gardens, the beautiful play yard. In the summer, it really becomes like a beautiful courtyard. So we call it, you know, we call it the community's backyard. We invite people to use the play yard with their kids. We have lots of seating and a Wi Fi extender throughout, like our grounds up to the farm and so people can just come hang out. We have chickens that just arrived. Everybody loves the chicken, so like we do, invite people. Please use our space. We don't have to be open for you to use our outdoor space. So yeah, just want to

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 47:50
say that

Blake Hunsley 47:51
well, as two people from the right side of the harbor, we may stop by.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 47:56
I do. I am a subscriber to the newsletter,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 47:59
so

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 47:59
I would encourage you know anybody who you know, really, anybody in HRM who wants to know more about it, but I you know specifically, if you're living in the Dartmouth North area, get the newsletter. It tells about everything that's going on in the calendar.

Caralee McDaniel 48:15
Yeah, and

Blake Hunsley 48:15
there's clearly a lot going

Caralee McDaniel 48:17
on we also love, like, if anybody ever wants, including you know, both of you, I think you said you've been there, but we love to give tours and chat, and even chat about how we might collaborate. So always, yeah, reach out.

Blake Hunsley 48:31
Believe me, I've already got ideas. We're gonna follow this conversation for sure. Okay, well, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for asking me this was fun, good. I'm glad. Thank you to our listeners. Thank you for listening to within our reach. Season Two of our podcast is made possible thanks to the support of the Province of Nova Scotia and the support for Culture Program. If you have feedback on an episode, an idea for future episode topics, or if you're interested in appearing as a guest, please write to us atwithin ourreach@reachability.org, thanks for listening.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai