Outreach group hosts health seminars.
Keith and Rookmin Mangar are organizers with the Parkdale Touch of Love program. This outreach initiative aims to cater to the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the Parkdale community. Touch of Love is now hosting Health lectures on the first Saturday of every month.
Staff photo/ERIN HATFIELD
A Parkdale-based outreach group, Touch of Love, is expanding its programming to try to address the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the community.
The Parkdale chapter of Touch of Love, an outreach organization under the Parkdale Seventh Day Adventist Church, began in 2002 when volunteers packed lunches and distributed them to the homeless in downtown Toronto. Organizers then began to host free dinners the third Tuesday of each month at Parkdale United Church at Dunn Avenue and King Street.
The organization has now decided to take their services further.
"We realized that these people just don't need one meal," said organizer Rookmin Mangar, who helps run the program with her husband Keith. "It was not enough...we wanted to expand it to meet the needs of the community."
Touch of Love is now hosting health lectures the first Saturday of the month.
"Our real thrust is to get out into the community and meet the needs of the community," Rookmin said. "While we were doing the dinner, we thought that we were falling short. We also wanted to show them (those in need that) if they are already ailing from a disease, how they can live with it and manage it."
The Touch of Love group developed a list of topics after hosting a session with the community to find out what would be of interest.
"We can have professionals come and give lectures and direct people to other resources," Keith said.
Seminars will be held the first Saturday of every month at 3 p.m. in the auditorium of the Parkdale branch of the Toronto Public Library. The first lecture was held in early January and was on the topic of diabetes.
Registered dietitian Beverley Edwards-Miller gave the lecture, which drew about 35 people.
Future topics will include topics such as living with high blood pressure and hypertension.
The Parkdale Seventh Day Adventist Church sponsors the lectures, but the couple say the lectures do not contain religion.
"People who want spiritual counselling or want to know more about the Bible, that is a separate program," Rookmin said. "We don't talk about the Bible in these lectures."
In addition to the health lectures, Touch of Love hopes to expand its programming even further to possibly include an exercise group, cooking classes, walking clubs and knitting circles.
"We are trying to get a good base (of participants) and the off-shoots would come," Rookmin said. "Because we are looking for the community to become involved in this program."
The next health seminar will be at the Parkdale Public Library Saturday, Feb. 4 from 3 to 4:30 p.m. The topic is Living with High Blood Pressure.