OAKVILLE — A youth art outreach program hard hit by COVID-19 survived the pandemic with a lot of help from friends.
Indeed, ArtHouse Halton, is flourishing.
Over the course of the pandemic, charities including ArtHouse in downtown Oakville, dealt with staffing shortages, a lack of resources, and being forced to close certain outreach programs down because of lack of funding.
COVID-19 has caused businesses to close and reopen constantly and the same has happened for these charities.
But ArtHouse Halton, which provides free art-based programs to children and youth who have little to no access to similar programs, used the instability caused by the pandemic to their advantage and pivoted their programs to a virtual platform. It’s been a successful transformation for the group.
Don Pangman, founder and executive director of ArtHouse, said the organization completely pivoted to virtual programming due to the uncertainty of closures.
The instability of opening and closing pushed ArtHouse to team up with other local businesses to support each another and do all they can for the families in need.
But ArtHouse also supported 70 families in need with food deliveries, which came to about 14,000 individual servings.
The organization received donations from over 300 donors which brought in more than $200,000, Pangman said. This money was used to purchase food from local restaurants like Kerr Street Café, Seasons Oakville and the Platter Company in Burlington, he said.
“As you can see, our transition was leveraged through many awesome partnerships,” Pangman said. The United Way also helped, along with government funding and private donations.
ArtHouse, founded in 2009, has helped more than 9,500 children through 661 neighbourhood and community programs in the Halton Region, according to its website.
The organization’s mission is to “serve the whole child where we can” and they have done just that at the most unprecedented times, ArtHouse’s website stated.
The goal is to help these youth in all ways, “physically, socially, emotionally, intellectually, educationally, nutritionally, environmentally and unconditionally in an atmosphere that is supportive and safe,” it said.
ArtHouse also supported the community by shopping for its supplies from local businesses rather than from box stores.
“We were able to help them out by paying (retail) mark ups,” Pangman said.
The ArtHouse continues to hold regular programs virtually with full classes of up to 25 children. The programs include visual arts, music theatre, environmental programs, cooking classes and literacy exercises.
They also have a particular focus on their new program “Tell Us About Yourself” where positive self-esteem is reinforced.
The instructors are picked very carefully and the children are provided with all the materials needed to participate in each program from the comfort of their own home.