吳婆婆 (Wu Popo) is a widowed senior living in Chinatown. With support from Yarrow, Wu Popo has persevered through housing insecurity and social isolation. Yarrow provided phone check-ins, translation assistance, fresh groceries, recreational activities, and most importantly, assistance in finding safe, affordable, and culturally appropriate housing when she needed it most.  With this community support, Wu Popo no longer has to couchsurf or worry about where she will sleep tomorrow. Instead, she is able to focus on fostering friendships and participating in community and cultural celebrations. 

We work with Wu Popo 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 Wu Popo since 2015.

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Give a holiday gift to Yarrow this winter solstice!

This winter solstice, we are raising $15,000 to continue cultivating intergenerational relationships, organizing for culturally competent healthcare services, and supporting the community’s demands for affordable housing in Vancouver’s Chinatown and DTES.

Your donations, no matter the amount, directly impact seniors’ access to medical care, essential social services, housing, and safe spaces for cultural celebration and connectedness.  

This year, we are happy to share that we will be providing a charitable tax receipt for donations of $50 or more. To receive a tax-receipt for your gift of $50 or more, please visit www.yarrowsociety.ca/donate.

Your giving goes a long way: 

• $10 will feed one senior for a week , providing them with access to nutritious, culturally appropriate, home-delivered groceries.
• $150 will empower one senior to overcome cultural and language barriers through medical accompaniment and interpretation support at hospital and specialist appointments.
• $400 will connect 100 seniors to our Chinese Seniors’ Hub morning exercise group, which runs twice a week, supporting seniors’ social connectivity, physical health, and leadership skills.

Why contribute to Yarrow?

• We provide one-on-one support for seniors who face language and cultural barriers to accessing government services to meet their housing, health, and income needs;
• We deliver fully subsidized, culturally appropriate groceries to seniors and at-risk community members in the Chinatown and Strathcona community;
• We provide free, culturally safe case management services in Chinese in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. We are one of the only two organizations offering this service, even though Chinatown and Strathcona have 32% and 45% of people speaking Chinese as their main language at home respectively.
• We help seniors access basic healthcare by providing medical accompaniment and interpretation support at their hospital and specialist appointments. 

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. 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!

Our long-term vision

Our vision is of a Chinatown that is intergenerational and thriving, with accessible and culturally relevant services and an environment that cherishes our seniors and youth. 

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 2023 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.

This winter solstice, we hope you will join us in giving our seniors the gift of nourishment, health, and social connection. 

This fundraiser is taking place on the traditional, ancestral, unceded, and occupied territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm. sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and the sel̓íl̓witulh Nations.