Every time I've called Peter at No Frill's and asked for his assistance, he has come through. When he heard about the Out of the Cold Cafe he quickly agreed to donate a $100 gift card every month. He's also repeated said, "When there's other things you need just give me a couple weeks notice and I'll do whatever I can." Every time we say thank you his heart felt response is, "This is easy, you guys are doing the hard the part." 

Kelly Garbe has an empathic, supportive listening approach and can offer a fresh

perspective to your feelings, thinking and behaviour. Building on the strengths within

each individual to create deeper resiliency and healing is something she is passionate

about and informs her approach. She can help you to understand what you are

experiencing and how to shift towards change. Kelly uses research based approaches

and has a compassionate, non-judgmental and respectful style that clients say puts

them at ease and allows them to process their experiences.

As a Registered Social Worker with 20 years’ experience, Kelly has completed her

Master of Social Work at University of Waterloo, her Bachelor of Social Work at

McMaster University and Bachelor of Sociology at University of Windsor.

She has honed her counselling skills in a variety of settings including municipal,

academic and non-profit agencies. She enjoys life-long learning and has completed

certification in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Emotion

Focused Therapy, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Mindfulness, Hospice Palliative Care,

Solution Focused Therapy and Trauma informed care.

Kelly works with individuals for a range of concerns including stress, life transitions,

depression and anxiety. Having worked in a Regional Cancer Centre, Kelly enjoys

supporting clients and loved ones overcome the challenges associated with a cancer

diagnosis. She also supports clients with pre and post-natal concerns, palliative

concerns, grief and bereavement and faith issues. Kelly matches her therapeutic

strategies to her client’s needs and is adept in individual and group therapy. She is a

member of the Ontario College of Social Workers, the Ontario Association of Social

Workers and the Association of Oncology Social Work.

“I take time to watch the sunset and to stay active. I understand the value of self-care

and that learning what nourishes and restores each of us is a life-long journey. I have

learned to run long distance in the last 5 years and have completed several Half

Marathons. I am grateful for my family, friends, health and the lessons and reflections

gathered by living through hard things. I enjoy deep conversations and I am optimistic

and hopeful.”

Wasim Jarrah is known as the "Realtor that gives a dime". Being one of the top Realtors in York Region and running a very busy real estate practice does not stop Wasim from serving his community and giving back to those in need by working with organizations to find housing for the homeless. His goal is to assist as many marginalized individuals as possible and to provide a better quality of life. 

He has tackled the homeless pandemic head-on by working with Blue Door Shelter to find homes for their clients and working closely with landlords to break the stigma and biases against homelessness and homeless LGTBQ members of the community. 

I have known Doreen for close to a decade and she has been a great support to CrossTrainers over the years. We can always count on Doreen to attend monumental anniversary celebration or fundraising events as well as to volunteer any way she can. When she heard about the Out of the Cold Cafe she immediately sent me a messaged saying, "Please tell me how I can help with this." When we spoke in person and I began to tell her about the corporate sponsorship needs she did not even need to hear all the details before she raised her hand and said, "I'm in!" and in the next breath said, "and I'll volunteer as well." 

On a side note, the legitimacy of the effectiveness of the products she offers people can clearly be seen in her personal health. I work part time at the Bradford Leisure Centre and am always amazed at how consistent she is at coming in and getting a great work out. 

I have known Nancy for over 15 years. She has always stood out to me as a woman and businesses owner who truly cared about her community and customers. She would go above and beyond hiring someone who was in need of a job by providing them with extra support by investing time into them as people. She also was the first person my who really seemed to understood the special dietary needs of people with celiac disease (who can not eat gluten). My cousin is celiac and shared with me 15 years ago (before being gluten free was a trendy thing) how hard it was to find any gluten free food, let alone good tasting gluten free food. Nancy is a gifted baker and through much trial and error figured out the perfect combination of flours that actually worked as a substitute for regular flour in recipes. Instead of copyrighting it or selling the receipt, Nancy gave it away at her store to any interested customers. Nancy not only is a monthly supporter of the Out of the Cold Cafe, she was also the first one to forward think to Christmas and she offered her baking skills to help make the season special for all of our friends who will come in. 

Over the years, while working on the Christmas Wish List dinner and other CrossTrainers events I found myself walking through the doors of many local businesses seeking food donations. You can tell right away if the owner are local and community minded. It's not to say that the bigger box stores don't support locally, because they have! But there's something different when the owners live locally. Kim and Dave have been very generous over the years and even though they need to run things through head office, they still seem to find a way to invest locally and sincerely care about the people of this town. 

When I contacted Starbucks West about supporting the Out of the Cold Cafe I was surprised to get an email back from a new general manager, Amy. The previous GM had been quite supportive of CrossTrainers Wish List dinner through donating coffee so I was a little bummed to hear he had moved on... until that is I spoke with Amy. She was shocked that the relatively new store had not found an organization to donate their left over food to and asked if that would be helpful to us. Would it ever!! I'm a big Starbucks fan but I'll be honest, I can't usually afford their food and neither could the majority of people who walk through the doors of the Out of the Cold Cafe so to be able to offer them something they normally would never get is such a gift to all of us. Amy's staff team is just as friendly and supportive of her. I'm already looking forward to seeing them every Monday/Wednesday and Friday mornings when I go in to pick up the food. 

When Juan, Norma & Ricardo read the article in Bradford Today about the Out of the Cold Cafe they reached out to us right away and offered to cook one meal a week! Not only are they cooking up delicious meals, but they are also individually packaging them so we can keep within all of the COVID restrictions in caring for the people coming in. That's a lots of work! I've never been to Mexico but one of the friends who was at the Cafe when we served these meals has been and said while eating their food, "I feel like I'm back in Mexico." So if you're craving some authentic Mexican food, pay our generous friends a visit! 

When I went into to Tina's Salon to get my first post lock-down hair cut the woman who cut my hair was not Tina. She was an apprentice Tina took on. During my cut and colour we had lots of time to chat and she told me about immigrating to Canada and how Tina gave her an opportunity when she really needed one. She has since moved on and Tina has brought on another apprentice. 

When I approached Tina about financially supporting this year Cafe she took time to think about it and seemed genuinely sorry that she wasn't in a financial place this year to help out in that way BUT she said she did want to provide us with gift certificates to provide some of our guest at the Cafe with to get free hair wash, cut and styles. Her heart is genuinely to help others and give people a hand up when no one else will.

For almost a year now Bradford's Little Caesars has been donating all of their day old pizzas to CrossTrainers. During COVID they were the perfect pre-packaged lunch/dinner for several of our under-resourced friends who made use of the shower and lunch program the town offered at the old Community Centre. When we started planning for the Out of the Cold Cafe our big audacious dream was to be able to provide a lunch 7 days a week. With Little Ceasars as our faithful stand by that dream is a reality. There is never a day that we will not be able to provide people who come in with food because we always have the option of delicious pizza! What a gift. 

We had never met the owners of Bradford's Don Cherry's Sports Grill, or even reached out to the about being involved with the Out of the Cold Cafe. When they heard about what we were trying to start they emailed right away to say they would like to contribute one meal a week! They are just another example of local business owners who are invested in our Bradford community. We all know that restaurants have taken a hit during COVID so they all have incredibly valid reasons to not be generous - that makes us value their contribution that much more!