Transport van to help Cool Aid Society’s health outreach team

Group benefiting from Rapid Relief Fund

A retrofitted van to transport doctors and nurses to key spots around the city — and get care to vulnerable people — is one of many benefits the Rapid Relief Fund is bringing to the Victoria Cool Aid Society with its most recent round of grants.

“We’ve also got a couple of tents so we can talk to people and treat people outdoors when necessary,” said Cool Aid spokesman Alan Rycroft.

He said it is “really exciting” that Cool Aid can expand its health-outreach team in this way, sending medical personnel in to areas beyond the community health centre that Cool Aid runs.

“We will be having nurses and doctors at most of the sites where people are being moved indoors from the encampments.”

The Rapid Relief Fund, created by the Jawl Foundation, the Victoria Foundation and the Times Colonist, was launched March 21 to help people most affected by COVID-19. It reached $1 million after just 36 hours and got to its goal of $6 million on May 12.

The $115,000 Cool Aid is receiving will allow the organization to provide telemedicine, Rycroft said. “We’re starting to provide remote medicine for people in Cool Aid buildings, including at Rock Bay shelter and Mount Edwards seniors’ home, for example.”

The grant will assist also with emergency dental services.

Rycroft said Cool Aid also benefited from the fund with an earlier $150,000 grant.

“It’s paying for food for our clients, it’s paying for phone cards and in some cases phone equipment that people need in order to access online services.”

He said the fund has been “extremely generous” to Cool Aid and its clientele, who are typically homeless or living in extreme poverty.

The success of the fund comes from a caring public, Rycroft said.

“Cool Aid is so thankful and so amazed at the huge generosity of the community,” he said. “It’s unbelievable how quickly a large sum of money has been raised to help a lot of different organizations and people, including people that are more in need than anyone else in our community.”

Groups funded along with Cool Aid in the category of physicaland mental-health supports include the following:

• Canadian Mental Association, B.C. division — $25,000 to provide rent and wage subsidies for people aged 18 to 62

• Oak Bay Volunteer Services Society — $15,000 to deliver medication and food to isolated Oak Bay seniors, along with provide wellness checks

• The Cridge Centre for the Family — $45,000 for counselling services to help families affected by social isolation and COVID-19

Grants have also been provided in the area of food access, including $80,000 for the Greater Victoria School District for its program to get food to families in need. The effort is an extension of the district’s schoolbased lunch program and was developed after schools closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.