Grant Recipients

We at Mobile Soup Kitchen and Elephant Thoughts want to express our sincere gratitude for the  generous support from the Blue Mountain Village Foundation.  Your donation will significantly help us maintain reliable transportation.  Having dependable vehicles is crucial for our operations.  This allows us to reach more people and expand our services.  We appreciate your commitment to our mission. Thank you again for your contribution and belief in our work.  We look forward to updating you on our progress.

The BMVF grant for Home Horizon’s Youth Outreach Program will have a transformative impact on the lives of at-risk youth in our community.  Young people who seek support from Home Horizon Outreach often face significant challenges, including family breakdown, abuse, trauma, mental health struggles, and substance use.  Indigenous, racialized, and LGBTQ+ youth are particularly vulnerable, facing systemic barriers that limit their access to essential resources and opportunities.

The grant from the Blue Mountain Village Foundation supports our Healthy Meals program at My Friend’s House, allowing us to provide nutritious meals and snacks for our families in our shelter.  Women prepare and cook their own meals while they stay with us.  These funds also allow us to provide nutrition education and budgeting best practices for meals and grocery shopping from our skilled staff members.  We are so grateful to the Blue Mountain Village Foundation for supporting this initiative for My Friend’s House.  With rising costs of food and significant intergenerational trauma we see with our clients, we know that breaking cycles and providing guidance and education around nutrition are so important to creating healthier futures for our families to thrive.  Thank you once again!

These are complex times.  Many people are struggling and finding it harder and harder to cope.  Sadly, we see the negative effects of these struggles represented in the local statistics, particularly tragically around opioid deaths and suicides.  

It is innate in all of us to want to help and many individuals are looking for opportunities to help but are unsure how to start.

This is Living Better with Parkinson’s third year hosting the South Georgian Bay Parkinsons Festival. We are thrilled to receive funding from the Blue Mountain Village Foundation which will offset complimentary lunches to the over two hundred attendees. 

The Seniors Wellness Program at the Marsh Street Centre is a delightful weekly event where seniors gather for a delicious lunch catered by a local restaurant, enjoying the company of others in a relaxed, small-group setting.  The event features fun, chair-based exercise sessions promoting gentle physical activity followed by engaging presentations and/or activities.

Gilda’s Club Simcoe Muskoka, an affiliate of the Cancer Support Community, is dedicated to providing support, education and hope to all people living with a cancer diagnosis. Gilda's Club will be using funding from the BMVF to support more members in the region. Accessible support to everyone on Collingwood, Wasaga Beach and the Town of The Blue Mountains is a priority for Gilda's Club. This grant will allow for expansion in Outreach, Virtual Programming and On Demand Programming. Thanks to The Blue Mountain Village Foundation for joining our community! Together, this community is STRONGER than cancer.

The grant received from the BMVF for our Camp Program 2025 will provide several children and youth with access to summer camps or extracurricular programs of their choice, offering them a chance to develop life skills and give them a sense of belonging. Our goal is to empower those children and youth and give them opportunities they wouldn’t have otherwise. Our camp program is a pre-existing program that has been running for several years, and we know first-hand how beneficial it is for its participants. Feedback we receive from children, youth and care providers motivates us to continue this program and enhance our partnerships with local camps, to give as many children and youth as possible with lifelong summer memories.

Magic of children in the Arts has been in operation in the Collingwood region for almost 30 years.  But to date, our focus has been on the 14 elementary schools in the Collingwood area.

The grant that we have received from BMVF will change this. These funds will go directly to supplying art workshops to the grades 3,6 and 8 of Georgian Bay Community School, located in the Meaford area.  As an added benefit to this grant, these workshops will be delivered by a local artist.

We are sincerely grateful for the support from BMVF.