Former Wawatay News editor and CBC Thunder Bay senior reporter Jody Porter was remembered for her award-winning journalism on Indigenous and social justice issues after she passed on July 19. Porter’s awards included the Radio Television Digital News Association’s 2011 Adrienne Clarkson Award for diversity and the Anishinabek Nation’s 2013 Debwewin Citation, which was launched
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A new $1.4 million paddock-to-plate café and restaurant funded by the Andrews Labor Government will give Shepparton students real-life training and become a destination for Victorian foodies.
Minister for Training and Skills Gayle Tierney today officially opened Common Ground Café and Restaurant at GOTAFE Shepparton and met with local TAFE students to taste some of their culinary creations.
The state-of-the-art facility includes an operational café that is open to the public with classrooms and multi-functional spaces that support learning opportunities for barista, hospitality and cookery students.
Common Ground will help reinvigorate the Fryers Street campus with its must-eat menu of sustainable foods that also showcase the talents of students in other departments, including agriculture and baking.
On a breezy Tuesday morning at Holly Oak Park in Shelby, arts and crafts and painting provided an escape for individuals battling mental illness.
The Self Care in the Park event was designed to be a day of restoration. Residents gathered to make crafts, including painting planter pots and writing self-affirmation phrases to put in mason jars.
Melodie McSwain, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Cleveland County, said self-care is critical during this time as many people are still recovering from the impact of COVID-19.
“Self-care is important,” said McSwain. “It was important before the pandemic, but this past year we have all seen increasing levels of anxiety, depression and loneliness that comes from increased isolation. The idea behind this event was to bring people together and to have a chance to take part in some self-care activities that they can replicate at home.”
Haverhill is offering free walkup or drive-up COVID-19 testing, beginning this Saturday.
The “Stop the Spread” site, provided by the state Department of Public Health, begins Saturday, April 10, and will run every Saturday, from 9 a.m.-2 p.m., at the Locke Street parking lot off Winter Street. It is next to Common Ground Café food pantry and in back of Butch’s Uptown restaurant.
The site is for Massachusetts residents only and there is no cost and no insurance is required.
By Win Damon |
File photograph. (Image licensed by Ingram Image.)
Despite changing state rules throughout the pandemic, Haverhill’s Community Action has been able to continue serving homeless and near-homeless residents with its Drop-In Center inside Haverhill’s Universalist Unitarian Church.
Longtime Drop-in Center Director Pat Dennehy says the early days of the pandemic created great difficulties because of the then-state limitation of serving just 10 individuals at a time.
“Usually we served about 75 people a day and we had to cut down to 10 which was difficult. The decision was basically made that I would only take in people who were actually outside, because if you’re out all night, you have to have a safe place to go. I’ve been open throughout the pandemic. They bumped us up to 25, brought us back down to 10. We had to change everything the way that we served food. Just everything had to change, but we stuck through it, and we’ve been open every day throughout