East Scarborough Storefront

Anne Gloger, Director
agloger@thestorefront.org
416 208 9889 x25
Charitable number: BN 13056 0188RR0001

Community. Design. Initiative. in action

About this organization

Mission

OUR VISION

East Scarborough is a safe, well-educated and prosperous community. The Storefront contributes to making the impossible possible by providing accessible sites for community members of all ages and cultures to find and share solutions they need to live healthy lives, find meaningful work, play and thrive. We are seen as an excellent model for sustainable social innovation and transformation in communities.

History of Organization

1999: Need for services reaches a crisis point as more than 800 people are housed in local motels

2000: Agencies and residents meet regularly to find an innovative solution the service crisis in East Scarborough

2001: The East Scarborough Storefront opens its doors with nothing but one large space and an enormous amount of goodwill

2003: The Storefront volunteer project is born

2004: The Storefront model is established and receives Vital Ideas Award

2005: Announcements are made that The Storefront would lose most of its funding and its home at Morningside Mall

2006: Residents and agencies rally - the famous SOS (Save Our Storefront) March and letter-writing campaign brought five funders to the table to fund the Storefront collaboratively

2007: The City of Toronto houses The Storefront in old Police Station at 4040 Lawrence Avenue East

2008: Residents, agencies, funders and supporters rally again to create The Storefront’s bold new vision

2009: The Storefront takes on broader community development work in a big way by supporting the garden, the market, resident engagement and community capacity building

2010: The Storefront takes on economic development with an innovative approach to employment and business supports. The community urges The Storefront to expand its space; youth and architects begin planning

Accolades and Accomplishments

2010

-The Storefront was nominated for a Canadian Urban Leadership award. The award recognizes groups and organizations that have made significant contributions to improving the quality of life in Canada’s cities and urban regions.

-The KGO (Kingston-Galloway/Orton Park) Youth Safety Audit team, supported by The Storefront’s Coordinator of Special Projects, was one of five winners for the Mayor’s Community Safety Awards. They also won an INI (Identify ‘N’ Impact) Award for their work on the walking safety audits in their community.

-The Storefront was a semi-finalist in the Scarborough Mirror/PCPI Urban Hero awards under the “Community” category.

2009

-Dip Habib, The Storefront’s Coordinator of Volunteers and Events, was awarded the Atkinson Foundation Leadership grant for his community organizing work. The grant allowed him to explore effective environmental social justice organizing in other communities.

2007

-The Storefront's Director, Anne Gloger, won the City of Toronto’s William P. Hubbard Award for Race Relations. She was nominated by a seniors’ group who felt that Anne’s work over the past two decades could be summed up with the words “partnerships” and “champion.”

RESEARCH/ ARTICLES

-Toronto's Inner Suburbs
Investing in Social Infrastructure in Scarborough (June 2011)
Deborah Cowen & Vanessa Parlette, University of Toronto

-Social Infrastructure in the Inner Suburbs
Poverty and the Priority Neighbourhoods Strategy in East Scarborough
Deborah Cowen & Vanessa Parlette
Department of Geography and Programme in Planning University of Toronto
"This pilot study explores the impact of Priority Neighbourhood designation on
the development of social infrastructure in one community in Southeast
Scarborough: Kingston-Galloway/Orton Park. This research uncovers a range
of creative approaches to targeted investment, local capacity building, and
community governance that have a positive impact in cultivating social
infrastructure that should be celebrated, supported, and shared."

-The East Scarborough Storefront Project:
A successful inter-organizational service collaboration
(September, 2007)
Brenda Roche and Joan Roberts, Wellesley Institute
"The East Scarborough Storefront (The Storefront) was chosen to explore and
determine the critical factors and dynamics of partnership and collaboration
that lead to a successful, formalized, inter-organizational service
collaboration. The Storefront stands out as a unique example of non-profit
work, emerging out of a coalition of community members, local faith-based
organizations, and community-based service providers who identified an
area marked by an increasingly vulnerable population of newcomers with
high needs who were under-served by agencies."

-Trends in performance management
In 2010 the HR Council of Canada cited the East Scarborough Storefront as
an innovative approach to best practices in human resources management.
A webinar was developed around The Storefront's compensation strategy
and an article written focusing on The Storefront's approach to performance
management.

Programs

>Community. Design. Initiative

The Storefront is a hub model of service delivery. It is a place for various agencies and groups to provide services, programs and supports, including:

Youth Services
Finance
Safety
Housing
Youth Employment
Employment
Health
Seniors groups
Education
Settlement Services
Legal
Recreation
Women-Focused
Mental Health

Community. Design. Initiative

Community.Design.Initiative (CDI) is an innovative partnership project that uses the power of architecture and design together with place-based poverty reduction to engage youth. The project brings together a dynamic range of people to create beautiful architecture for a community where it is absent.

Program Impact

The design phase breaks down barriers to careers in architecture and planning for young people from marginalized communities by providing mentorship by planners and architects. The youth take a lead in the building's design.

Creating spectacular architecture in a priority neighbourhood that is normally only found in the downtown core not only transforms a neighbourhood, but also makes people want to live in and invest in their community.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

"One-quarter of Toronto’s youth lack a sense of belonging to their local community, a feeling that increases significantly as they reach young adulthood."

(Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2008)

Participant Vignette

"When I found out that we were going to have a program that allowed youth to design a building, I thought it would have been chaos...kids don’t have a lot of knowledge about architecture. When I was 10 years old, all I wanted to do was break things.

"Working with the Storefront has brought me closer to my community. It allowed me to step into a role, it allowed me to put on the shoe of a construction worker or architect, or a so-called white collar job. It gave me a feel of what that person would do. Being able to make these huge decisions is kind of amazing, but this is exactly what The Storefront does."

-Ajeev Bhatia

Giving Opportunity

Activities a donation will support

Your gift will help:

create 20 new offices, allowing us to both triple the number of partners serving residents and repatriate The Storefront staff now working in a rented space in another location
launch new community programs and training opportunities, including food service, catering, small business development and sustainable living
transform outdoor parking lots and unusable spaces into multi-purpose activity areas for local children and families
position The Storefront as a “green” role model, integrating eco-friendly practices in an urban environment
improve accessibility for community members with physical and mental health challenges
provide expanded meeting and community event space in the heart of our neighbourhood

Donation impact

With financial support, CDI will continue to provide opportunities for local youth to learn about design and architecture from professionals, while creating a welcoming, environmentally-friendly space in which residents can access an array of free services in their own neighbourhood.

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