Toronto: : Ismaili Muslims across the country are addressing shortages of personal protective equipment by offering their time and resources to make home-made cloth face masks for local communities.
To date, over 6,000 masks have been delivered to various organizations, including long-term care facilities, local food banks, public transportation employees, and other essential service workers in the Greater Toronto Area.
Recipients of these mask masks include Michael Garron Hospital, Covenant House, Trillium Health Partners, St. Elizabeth Health Care, West Neighbourhood House, Gibson Long Term Care Facility and Flemingdon Park Community Food Bank.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ismaili community in Canada has committed to support local communities by making home-made face masks to provide to essential workers, collecting non-perishable food items by collaborating with local grocery stores in order to support local food banks, and providing snacks to frontline workers at various hospitals. 149 – 151 Bartley Drive, North York, Ontario, Canada M4A 1C9 Telephone: (416) 751-4001 Facsimile: (416) 751-6401
Ramadan Food Drive:
In keeping with their annual tradition, Ismaili CIVIC held its Ramadan Food Drive to address food shortages in local communities due to the current global pandemic.”This year, we partnered with a number of grocers in the province of Ontario, where community members donated non-perishable food items.
These were then be delivered to food banks by Ismaili CIVIC volunteers. The community has donated over 5,663 pounds of food as part of this year’s initiative,” a spokesperson said.
Snack Delivery:
Ismaili CIVIC partnered with Happy Pops (happypops.ca), run by Leila Keshavjee, to deliver snacks to frontline staff at local hospitals. Cumulatively, Ismaili CIVIC volunteers have delivered over 31, 500 snacks to the following hospitals: Michael Garron, Humber River, Oakville, Markham Stouffville; UHN (Toronto Rehab (all sites), Toronto Western, Toronto General, Princess Margaret, North York General Hospital, Sunny Brook, St. Joseph’s, St. Michael’s, Providence, Mount Sinai and Bridgepoint.
Ismaili CIVIC is an initiative of the Canadian Ismaili Muslim community, to demonstrate its long standing commitment to Canada by improving the quality of life of all its citizens. This initiative strengthens the community’s deep-rooted ethics of volunteer service, and exemplifies Islam’s core values of peace, compassion and care for the vulnerable.
The Ismaili Muslim Community in Canada is governed by volunteers under the aegis of His Highness Prince Aga Khan Shia Imami Ismaili Council for Canada, headquartered in Toronto.
Local Ismaili Councils are based in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.
Over the last 50 years of Ismaili settlement in Canada, the community has sought to contribute to the fabric of Canadian society by involvement in many spheres of public life, and through regional programs that demonstrate the ethic of volunteerism and compassion.
During the Canada 150 commemoration year, Canadian Ismailis gave over 1.5 million hours of voluntary service via Ismaili CIVIC. Over 45% of these hours were contributed by Ismailis residing in Ontario.