$20,000 donation boosts Main Street Community

Christmas came early for one local Ottawa charity last week.

A cheque for $20,000 was presented to Shelley-Anne Steinburg, the founder and executive director of Main Street Community Services at their Stittsville-based office.

The Santa Claus responsible for the generous donation was Walton Development and Management.

“Walton is proud to support Main Street for their tireless work on behalf of children, youth and adults with special needs,” said Bill Doherty, Walton CEO. “Hometowns aren’t built with just bricks and mortar.

They are created by generations of families from all walks of life who come together to build something lasting and a place to call home. Main Street provides critical programs and services in Ottawa and we share that mission to help build and maintain strong communities.”

For a not-for-profit and registered Charity like Main Street, this kind of lump sum gift doesn’t come along very often. Specializing in providing programs and services for children, youth and adults with Special Needs, Main Street finds itself in the position of continually fundraising to meet expenses.

Steinburg concedes that two of the biggest fundraising activities they do each year takes her staff and parent volunteers hundreds of hours with nowhere near the return this one “act of kindness” provided.

With seven therapeutic residential/respite homes in the area, a day program, after school program, social skills training, developmental respite, two summer camp programs and much more, Main Street has become firmly entrenched in the local social services sector.

In 2012 Main Street Community Services supported almost 310 families in the greater Ottawa area. This only scratched the surface of the reported number of families seeking such services in Eastern Ontario.

With the high staff-to- child ratio needed, they are limited on how many clients they can support because they have outgrown their current facilities.

The day programs are currently operated out of the top floor of a small school building. Ideally, fundraising is aimed at the big picture of acquiring a more suitable facility, but as Steinburg says, that’s very difficult to do when the day-to-day expenses eat up those monies. That’s why she says she is overwhelmed with gratitude at the generosity of Walton Development and Management.

The Walton Group of Companies is a real estate investment and land development company with nearly 13,000 acres of land owned or managed in Ontario, including markets in Niagara, Brant County, Simcoe and Ottawa South.