Coldest Night of the Year - Special Charity Spotlight

Each Friday I run a Charity Spotlight feature on my business blog. It seemed highly appropriate to devote today's spotlight feature to Coldest Night of the Year. 

Read the special Charity Spotlight - Coldest Night of the Year here

Here is what Brian Carney, CEO of Blue Sea Philanthropy added to our recent discussion for our Charity Spotlight feature.

"Charities like MTH exemplify the type of charity we love working with though. Big community involvement. Fun, engaged leadership. A big vision for the future and from our stand point in CNOY, just really great people to work with on this national event. Donna, Lorna - the whole team has been a pleasure to work with. Milton will have a great walk this year again." 

The CNOY scoreboard is great to watch as it goes up every 15 minutes. There is still time to join a team, create a new team, donate and volunteer. Good luck everyone.

I am really excited to be walking tomorrow. Go The Flakes!!! I will be tweeting too using #cnoy16. Please follow and post too. I would love to be able to take part in each one of the 92 walks across Canada.

Coldest Night of the Year Milton Launch Party

Come down to our Coldest Night of the Year Milton launch party on January 9 at the Milton Sports Centre.

The launch party runs Saturday, January 9 between 1:30-3:00pm in the Banquet Room of the Milton Sports Centre. Bring all of your friends and family too. We will have snacks, snowflake crafts, snowball (indoor) games and prizes galore for the kids.

Come and register your team or volunteer to help

The Milton COLDEST NIGHT WALK this year is on Saturday, February 20 with registration from 4–5pm (along with team photos, games and snacks), and the walk itself will start at 5:15 from the Milton Sports Center (Banquet Room). We’ll walk through the Willmott neighbourhood. After your walk there will be warm drinks, hot soup and sweet treats waiting for you back in the Banquet Room.

Register to walk NOW

Promote #cnoy16 on social media

Show you support for Coldest Night of Year across Canada by using hashtag #cnoy16 across all social media platforms.

Please share this post.

Coldest Night of the Year 2016

Giving Tuesday provided a great platform for the launch of Coldest Night of the Year 2016 which takes place on Saturday February 20, 2016.



Here is my Opencity Inc Charity Spotlight blog post about Blue Sea Philanthropy who run the nationwide Coldest Night of the Year campaign. Milton Transitional Housing will again be one of the partner charities.

There will be more information through the MTH Facebook page.

Inspiring Housing... Our Future forum

The first Milton Transitional Housing (MTH) forum titled HOUSING... OUR FUTURE was a wonderful exploration from multiple agencies on the need for affordable housing solutions in both Milton and across Canada. There is a clear gap with a 0.5% rental vacancy rate in Milton.

"75% of those affected by homelessness have children under 18"

said keynote speaker Brain Carney, CEO of Blue Sea Philanthropy.

Carney gave a very personal, open, honest account of his journey. He gave multiple examples demonstrating that this is a Canadian wide issue. "Money invested in housing solutions is better", he stated. "You are not alone. Other people are bothered too... Housing matters".

The forum including a distinguished group of panelists that included Alyssa Gremmen Program Manager of the POSSE project, social worker Jason Palmer from MTH, Melissa Hillier Client Services Supervisor at Halton Women's Place described how they had to turn away more than 400 women last year due to lack of capacity, Amber Armstrong Employment Support Worker at Community Living Burlington outlined the special work of Housing Alternatives Network Directive (HAND) supporting those families with developmental needs, and Maureen Andrews from Toronto Regional Police Service where she is Regional Controller for Commande. Andrews reflected;

"Helping one person at a time is really rewarding"

The work of these agencies, including Milton Transitional Housing is making a difference. Four people have now formally graduated from Milton Transitional Housing and achieved independent living. In these four years, MTH has helped 9 adults and 7 children, including those currently in the program. Carney's own perception is that MTH has "been punching above its weight and age".

Blue Sea Philanthropy are the charitable organization, based in Kitchener, behind the Coldest Night of the Year event. The date for the 2016 Coldest Night was also announced - February 20th, 2016. Tell your friends, family and community.

The forum was made possible through the Ontario Trillium Foundation grant. Congratulations to Donna Danielle for an excellent job hosting the speakers and the wider communication team and volunteers on such an important and well run event.

Look out for further coverage in the Milton Canadian Champion. There will also be a Charity Spotlight about Blue Sea Philanthropy on the Opencityinc.com blog in the coming weeks. You can review more from the forum by search #MTHforum2015 on Twitter. According to Hashtracking.com this created 27,000 impressions on Twitter.