TORONTO: Over 1000 members of the Ismaili community and their family and friends of all ages from 1 to 88 came together at 14 volunteer service events throughout the GTA and across Ontario to commemorate the second annual Ismaili CIVIC Day.
The community engaged in various park clean-ups, served meals at food shelters and volunteered and participated in various community walks and hikes throughout Ontario. They served over 100 meals, welcomed 14 representatives from all levels of government including MP’s Yasmin Ratansi (Don Valley East), Dr. Geng Tan (Don Valley North) and Nathanial Erskine-Smith (Beaches-East York) and collected 150 bags of garbage.
In Ajax, Mayor Steve Parish, MPP Rod Phillips, who is also the Ontario Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks and Councillor David Pickles were on hand to congratulate the community for their clean-up of Miller’s Creek Community Park. Minister Phillips later tweeted several photos from the Ajax event and remarked: “Amazing work by volunteers supporting @IsmailiCivic activities across Canada this past weekend.”
In Brampton, the community cleaned Northhampton Park (which they adopted) and representatives from all levels of government including Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey, MP Ruby Sahota (Brampton North), MPP’s Kevin Yarde (Brampton North), Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria, (Brampton South), and Amarjot Sandhu, (Brampton West) met over 100 members of the Brampton Ismaili community. MPP Sandhu noted that the Ismaili community represents the best of Canada and MPP Sarkaria was impressed by the number of youth who participated in Ismaili CIVIC Day.
Downtown, MP Arif Virani (Parkdale-High Park) was on hand to help serve meals at Strachan House Shelter with the community while Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie and MP Omar Alghabra (Mississauga Centre) joined the Mississauga Valley Park clean-up. Mayor Crombie addressed the community and later tweeted “Thank you for your commitment & dedication to our great City!” Each year, on the fourth Sunday of September, Ismaili CIVIC Day kicks off a series of year-long volunteer events in which the Ismaili Community partners with community organizations, municipalities, and service groups to put its ethics into action. During Canada’s 150th anniversary year, Canadian Ismailis contributed over 1.5 million hours of community service to improve the lives of fellow Canadians. Over 650,000 of these hours were provided by the Ismaili community in Ontario.
The Ismaili community will continue to give back to Canada by holding service initiatives throughout the year and will again come together next September to commemorate Ismaili CIVIC Day 2019. The next Ismaili CIVIC service event will be a clean-up of Thorncliffe Ravine Park that will take place on October 6, 2018.