Christmas

Tis the Season: Momiji Holiday Fundraising

201910 Holiday Treats 799x600 Program Sheet 2019 - DELIVERY FRONT

As the Holiday Season approaches, so do our annual Holiday fundraising programs!  We are pleased to offer the following programs again this year:

HOLIDAY TREAT PROGRAM:  Shortbread, Mincemeat, Gingerbread, and more…  Our volunteer bakers will soon be busy making delicious homemade cookies for Momiji to be sold to our tenants, their families and community members.  The cookies are packaged by our volunteer elves and come in various sizes and prices ranging from our Santa Superior Box (45 cookies for $20.00) to our Elves Dozen (12 cookies for $7.00).  They make a great gift – for yourself, a friend or a loved one.

VANDERMEER WINTER FUNDRAISING PROGRAM:  Vandermeer Nursery has grown high quality plants in Ajax, including poinsettias and cyclamen, for over 50 years. These high quality plants are the focus of their annual Winter Fundraising program.  The program includes winter-decorated baskets and evergreen planters in a wide range of prices.  Under the program, Momiji purchases the plants at a discount and sell them at cost. These seasonal plants and planters can spruce up your home or can be given as a gift.  We even deliver to our tenants!

Please contact Sheri-Lynn at fundraising@momiji.on.ca or at 416.261.6683, ext. 259 to order or for more information.  The ordering deadline for both programs is at the end of November.  Pre-payment is required.

All proceeds from both of these fundraising activities go to Momiji’s Senior Active Living Centre to be used to fund Dance! Dance! Dance! with the National Ballet
or the Momiji Singers – two very popular programs that no longer have funding.

Holiday Greetings from the Chair

Momiji Christmas 2018

November 2018

To me, the Holiday Season is all about family, food and friends and it is also a time to reflect.  While you may know me best as the Chair of the Board of Directors at Momiji Health Care Society, my father lives at Momiji, which also makes me a family member of one of the tenants as well.  In this role, I see first hand what excellent care and respect he receives from the staff at Momiji.  I am sure any of our tenants or their family members will tell you the same thing.

In the time that I have personally been involved with Momiji, I have seen so many changes.  The biggest is the health of the seniors.  Since few tenants move out of Momiji each year, our waiting list, currently over 750 individuals, continues to grow.  By the time the seniors move into Momiji, they are on average much older.  With age comes increasingly complex care needs, much more than a supportive housing organization can provide.  The daily tasks for our 29 PSWs include safety checks, medication reminders, personal care, homemaking (i.e. shopping, light meal preparation), medical/non-medical escorting, health promotion/consultation, and joint services with outside providers of foot care, physiotherapy, and family physician clinics. Increasingly, our PSWs are required to do heavier personal care for many of our tenants.  An incredible 55,170 days of personal care services were delivered in the past year alone, and the demand continues to rise. With demand, so do the costs.

While all of this happens inside the Momiji Residence, Momiji is also so much more than just a building.  Momiji staff connect seniors in the community with services and programs they need to maintain their quality of life and independence.  This includes providing nutritious Japanese meals at our Community Dining programs, friendly visits from Momiji-trained volunteers, personal care services and counselling and information referral services.  As the seniors in the community age, their needs continue to grow.  This too stretches our resources.

Thanks to our volunteers and donors like you, we have been able to accomplish a lot this past year, but there is still much to be done.  As we enter our fifth decade, we know that we must continue to provide excellent care – both at Momiji and in the community.  We also know that we must innovate in order to anticipate and accommodate the needs of a new generation of seniors while serving the needs of the current seniors.

Honouring our seniors by caring for them and preserving their dignity and independence is both a duty and a promise. We hope that we can count on your support during this season of giving to help us continue on with our important work.  Please give generously so that helping our seniors today will enable them to do more tomorrow.

With best wishes for a healthy and happy New Year.
Sincerely,

Pam Waintraub
Chair, Board of Directors

Holiday Greetings from the Chair

Momiji Xmas Card 338x450

December 7th, 1992 was a milestone day for Momiji Health Care Society. After 14 years of building and fundraising, the Momiji Seniors’ Residence finally opened as the first supportive housing seniors’ residence in the Japanese-Canadian community, welcoming a record 170 tenants in the first few months.

These early tenants were a youthful average age of 75 years. They played tennis in the auditorium and ping pong in the residents’ lounge; they planted and looked after the beautiful gardens, the store, the library and the reception desk. A security system was put into place with night patrol and fire wardens.

This year Momiji is celebrating our Seniors Centre’s 25th anniversary and the average age of our tenants is now almost 90 years. Our tenants have remained independent an average of 10 years longer than any other supportive housing facility in Ontario. Over the years, close to 400 tenants have been able to call Momiji “home” and have “aged in place”. Incredibly, eight of our original tenants still call Momiji home.

As you can imagine, the care needs at 90 years of age may be more complex than at 75 years. At Momiji, security checks, transportation, reminders for meals, activities and medications, are vital parts of everyday life. Meals, social and education activities and even the availability of an on-site family doctor and nurse are essential to wellness and quality of life.

Similarly, outside of our Seniors Centre, seniors are aging in their homes and their care needs are changing. Our community programs, like friendly visits and dining and education, enable us to reach out and stay in touch with lonely and potentially isolated seniors in the community. This allows us to bring Momiji’s focus on seniors’ wellness to the broader community.

Year after year, our Support Services and Community Services departments have seen dramatic increases in demand and costs for all activities. Despite these changes, we remain steadfast with our commitment to offer respect, dignity and independence for seniors.

Although we receive some government funding, our increased care demands and outreach programs have received no additional funding. Since we cannot continuously do more with less, not surprisingly, our need to raise funds has increased.

Your gift today in celebration of our 25th anniversary will help ensure that Momiji’s next 25 years gets off to a great start.

On behalf of our Board of Directors, our staff and volunteers, we wish you and your family a very happy holiday season and all the best for 2018.

Pam Waintraub, Chair
Momiji Health Care Society

P.S. If you would like to make a donation, you can do this online (just click the Donate Now button) or send in a cheque to the address above. Thank you!

Momiji Health Care Society’s Winter Fundraiser Starts November 1st!

We are pleased to announce that Momiji Health Care Society has once again partnered with Vandermeer Nursery for this annual Winter Fundraiser. Starting Tuesday, November 1st and running until Thursday, December 1st, you can order locally grown holiday plants and outdoor evergreen decorations and support Momiji. The money that we raise will go towards our programs and services which benefits the seniors. Every order counts!

For more information, please contact Sheri-Lynn in the Economic Development & Donor Relations office or call her at 416.261.6683, ext. 259.

As in the past, we will deliver to Momiji tenants but all other orders should be picked up on Friday, December 9th at Momiji or as soon as possible to help ensure that the plants keep looking their best.

Thank you for supporting our seniors!

Please click here to view the available products and order form.