Ms. Chen is a widowed senior who has been coming to our Friday meetings for a month. She met a new friend, and even signed up to participate at an upcoming youth-organized event. Our outreach worker has paired her up with Sam, a youth volunteer, so that Ms. Chen and Sam can check in with each other and build a supportive relationship.

We work with Ms. Chen to ensure she has access to the necessary benefits and services to have a healthy and happy livelihood. When she needs assistance, she can come to us. We have been supporting seniors like Ms. Chen since 2015.

This year, we are raising $28,000 to keep our intergenerational drop-in space open and further grow our core services and programming for low-income Chinese seniors. Will you donate today? Every dollar will help.

Why contribute to Yarrow (formerly Youth for Chinese Seniors)?

• Since the success of our Seeds for Longevity fundraiser in November 2017, we have opened an intergenerational drop-in space in Vancouver Chinatown. All community members are welcome to come in without an appointment, and many low-income Chinese seniors have been referred to us through word of mouth by other seniors. In just the last year, with only two part-time staff, we have responded to over 80 service requests at our drop-in hours. Your donations will help pay for rent for the drop-in centre, and potentially even for a  move to a larger space in the same building.

• We provide one-on-one support for seniors who have difficulty accessing healthcare, social services, and other government support due to language, cultural, and other barriers. We are currently one of the only organizations in Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside that provides in-language, culturally competent case management services free of charge, even though there is such great community need. Your donations will help us hire a new outreach worker who speaks Mandarin, in addition to our current outreach worker who speaks Cantonese.

• We hold weekly gatherings that are a safe space for seniors to meet each other, discuss what’s happening in their lives and in the neighbourhood, and organize around issues that matter to them. In 2019-2020, we will focus on developing leadership among seniors to shine a light on a universal issue that affects them daily: access to healthcare. Medical accompaniment is one of our most highly requested services, and the healthcare system should be fully accessible to non-English speakers. Your donations will help to support our seniors in developing a campaign.

Here are some suggested amounts you can give:

• $15 a month will sustain our drop-in space and casework support.
• $20 will let us provide buns for a weekly senior meetings where we discuss how to combat issues in the neighbourhood.
• $50 will support a senior in applying for Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement.
• $100 will make sure a senior can attend a doctor’s appointment with proper translation support.
• $200 will support a youth-led intergenerational event.
• $500 will allow us to develop a campaign strategy with seniors to make healthcare fully accessible.

Why are donations important?

Your donations matter because they make it possible for us to be directly accountable to our community and the needs of our seniors and youth.

Non-profits are accountable to the people who fund them. When we apply for a grant, we must meet the program requirements set forth by the funder and actualize their priorities. While Yarrow is grateful for the grant support it receives, unfortunately funder priorities do not always align with the needs of our community. Furthermore, funder priorities may change from year to year, even though the core services and programs that our community needs have not changed.

Donations are not only a financial action, but also a political action. We believe that building a broad base of individual donors from the community is an important way to sustain our work. Our previous Seeds for Longevity fundraiser helped us transition from being fiscally sponsored to an independent non-profit and hire two part-time bilingual staff. We are now reaching out to our community again and asking you to help us continue to grow so we can focus on serving and empowering our youth and seniors!

“If you want one year of prosperity, grow wheat. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people.”

Our long-term vision

Yarrow’s ultimate vision is of a thriving, equitable, and intergenerational community in Chinatown.

To make this vision real, we are working to build our organization’s capacity to serve and empower marginalized seniors in Chinatown. Our priorities for 2019 include continuing our core programs and services, developing senior leadership to organize for culturally competent healthcare services, and supporting the community’s demands for affordable housing in Vancouver Chinatown.

We recognize that our community’s service needs come from systemic inadequacies and inequality. While it has been long been acknowledged that racialized people and people who do not speak English as their first language face more obstacles to accessing vital services and community connections, these obstacles still remain. Long-term inequalities require us to build power as a community and demand long-term solutions. For this, Yarrow will need your continued support.