Over the past month, my BLOG has addressed the many issues related to the challenges people in my community face with regards to celebrating the Christmas and New Year holidays. These challenges include the obvious ones – the lack of financial resources to actually celebrate anything. As well as the less obvious one, - the social isolation that affects people in my community and keeps them marginalised through the holiday season. This can only increase the mental health challenges that affects so many already.
For those who
are still putting away Christmas decorations, it may seem a little early to
start discussing Easter. This year, the Easter weekend falls in early April. But
already conversations have started in my community as to how we might try to
enhance the holiday experience. People are saying that 3 months should be
enough time for an organizing committee or advocacy group to start the
conversation as to how we might try to ensure that this Easter people are not isolated
and alone.
Readers may recall that last year, the only organization that held an open event for the community was Souls Harbour, which hosted an Easter dinner. As I wrote in this BLOG at the time, many people only found out about the event at the last minute – and some only AFTER the dinner had happened. Clearly there were communications issues around publicizing the event in the target community.
I have discussed the challenges faced by community groups thinking to host big community meals such as Easter and Thanksgiving dinners in BLOGs here and here. Just as costs have been going up for individuals and households, it has been getting steadily more expensive for community groups to mobilize the resources needed for big community dinners. We have also been hearing how it is getting more and more difficult to mobilize the volunteers on such days that are needed to deliver such events.
Every holiday is different. Christmas nowadays is pretty much a month long event, with many different festive activities from parades to parties extending all the way to New Years. Thanksgiving is effectively only a one day event. While Easter is a long weekend, including both Good Friday and Easter Monday. But one thing that unites all these holidays is the extent to which people living in poverty, many of whom live with mental health issues, find these festive times to be times of social isolation and loneliness.
In an October BLOG from last year, I shared how a social prescription approach would help to address these issues by different sorts of outreach and support activities. Since there has been no take-up to date of the social prescription approach by any Provincial Government agencies, I think it will fall again upon the shoulders of community volunteers and groups to address this issue.
Concerned individuals and groups need to come together and come up with a plan for how best to engage community members in some form of social activities on the Easter weekend. We need to do better than simply publicizing the one Easter Dinner at Souls Harbour – if they are indeed holding the event again this year.
Easter is a long weekend, and as I wrote in an earlier article, it can be a VERY long weekend for the many people in my community who are not generally invited to social events or even family get-togethers. I therefore think we should be looking at a more ambitious social program than one dinner on Easter Sunday. There is certainly a place for the traditional Easter meal: eating together is an excellent way of bringing people together to socialize, and everyone appreciates a good meal!
But we should also look at other activities over the long weekend, as many agencies and community centres are closed for the full four days, leaving low income individuals even more isolated than usual. Some of my usual informants tell me that of all the holidays, the long Easter weekend is the one in which they feel the most isolated and the most vulnerable to mental health issues.
With all that being said, here is my suggestion for the coming Easter long weekend: Let’s organize a 4 day program of accessible activities!
Day #1 Good Friday - Games Day: Let’s host a Games Day whereby people come together at a designated location to play some board or card games. Refreshments can be kept light, - with tea, coffee and snacks.
Day #2 Easter Saturday - Movie Day: Lets gather somewhere to watch a movie and socialize afterwards. Refreshments could include popcorn and non alcoholic beverages.
Day #3 Easter Sunday - Dinner: This would be the day for serving a sit-down meal, preferably a traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings, if possible. It would be great if we could combine the meal with other activities such as musical entertainment. This would ensure that people do not just “eat and run”, but stay around and socialize.
I do recognize that for many Nova Scotians, Easter Sunday has an important religious significance. So many may want to attend a church service on Easter Sunday. I think it is important that we recognize and respect this aspect of the Easter holiday, and try to plan our activities so that they do not make people choose between a church service and a community meal. But we should not directly engage people to attend church, that would not be appropriate.
Day 4 Easter Monday – Group Meeting: After three days of different activities, I think we should try to capitalize on people’s goodwill and spirits by hosting a Support Group Meeting. Hopefully, over the three days, people will have had the opportunity to meet and get-to-know others in our community. Building on this goodwill, we can invite people to come together to share their feedback on the different activities and discuss what worked and what didn’t. And what we could do together in the future.
The Challenge: Developing a plan such as this is not difficult. The difficult part is to translate these ideas into action. Clearly, one person cannot organize something like this alone. It takes many hands as well as financial resources. This is why we need to get a committee together to organize the activities and secure the needed funding. Put in those terms, the 10 weeks to Easter seems a lot closer than before!
As I have written in previous BLOGs, my vision of the future is of a fully funded and operation Social Prescribing Organization that will have the mandate and resources to deliver these sorts of initiatives in HRM for our community.
In the meantime, we will just have to roll up our sleeves and do it ourselves! Are you with me?
Kendall Worth
is an award-winning anti-poverty activist who lives with disabilities and tries
to make ends meet on income assistance.
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