Capes for Kids raised $1 million in its yearly campaign for the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital.
The campaign started in January with the fundraising process beginning in March, giving people the opportunity to donate and raise funds to support children with disabilities.
Fundraisers needed to raise $100 to earn a superhero cape. Participants were urged to wear the cape everywhere to build support, and on Feb. 6, they broke the Guinness World Records title for the largest gathering of people wearing capes.
Ashleigh Saith, the vice president for Strategy and Engagement, said that Holland Bloorview tries to meet the needs of everyone.
“Things like mental health support, research, music and art programming, and therapeutic planning are examples of what we fund,” Saith said. “We do this through a variety of donor support and a really amazing community that really comes together.”
Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital is the only children’s rehabilitation hospital in Canada that focuses on academic leadership in the field of child and youth rehabilitation and disability.
“Holland Bloorview has a really long history of leadership and it’s actually one of the first pediatric rehabilitation hospitals,” Saith said.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work since then, meeting in the field of advocacy as well as our research in care and providing the best care possible for kids and constantly trying to do better for them,” she said.
Easter Seals Ontario is another charitable organization dedicated to supporting and advocating for disabled people.
“For us, disabled will never mean unable,” said Rebecca Mudrick, the communications officer at Easter Seals Ontario.
“That’s why Easter Seals Ontario is dedicated to helping children and youth with physical disabilities carve their own path into the world, with assurance and autonomy,” she said.
Easter Seals Ontario started an Ambassador Program, which provides children with disabilities to campaign for themselves.
The Ambassador Program aids children with various physical disabilities with the ability to develop leadership and public speaking skills.
“Each year, we select two young members of Easter Seals to represent the organization as Provincial Ambassadors along with many Regional Ambassadors across the province,” Mudrick said.
“These brilliant young people get the opportunity to share their stories, serve as role models for other physically disabled kids in Ontario, and educate the wider world, who may not understand the challenges that disabled people face,” she said.
Black Creek community resident Elaine Bennett, a forty-four-year-old mother of a disabled child, said that people with disabilities need all the support and help they can get.
“They need someone to guide them and help them to do the right thing, and it depends on the disability too because some disabilities are really severe,” Bennett said.
“People with a disability need a lot of help from others because sometimes their mind is not completely developed,” she said.
Bennett said she noticed that her son had a disability on his first day of school.
“He had just started kindergarten. When I took him to school, he would cry a lot when I tried to leave him and he would run behind me like he was really scared,” Bennett said.
“When I asked him why he doesn’t want to stay in the classroom, he said too many people were in the classroom, so his teachers noticed that something was wrong so they gave him an assessment,” she said.
The Funeral Director program at Humber College also participated in the Capes for Kids campaign.
“We actually have a really great group of Humber students who are fundraising for us this year,” Saith said. “I am not 100 per cent sure how many are signed up for the team, but it is the Funeral Services Program. They have their Capes for Kids team.”
The 2023 Capes for Kids fundraiser has raised over $1 million and their next campaign will begin in the fall.
“People who sign up are welcomed to make their own capes. We love seeing all the really creative capes that come out in the community, but once you raise $100 or $50 for children, you can receive one of our shiny red capes,” Saith said.