How We Are Different

Services at Toronto Cares are purposefully designed to treat every client, no matter their background, with dignity, respect, and the freedom of choice! Whether it's our Produce Market, Clothing Drive, Homeless Meal or a seasonal event like Back-To-School and Christmas, our clients always have a choice of what they're getting.

Marginalized communities and those from low-income backgrounds, are often told by society that they need to take what they can get and be happy… at Toronto Cares we think that's a ridiculous concept, and that every human being has the right to choose.

During Christmas, our senior clients get to request any item they want under $60, and then our donors go out and purchase them and wrap them for us to deliver. We don't want kids to receive Christmas presents that they have no interest in, so parents come in and pick out any number of items with a total value of $60, so that their kid is getting something they're excited for on Christmas morning rather than whatever's been handed to them. For Back-To-School, the kids come in and pick out their own backpacks and lunch bags so they get colors and designs that they can bring to school with pride.

Our Homeless Meals, Produce Markets, and Clothing Drives are no different. At every single event that Toronto Cares hosts, clients walk away with exactly what they want, nothing more, nothing less.

Volunteering with Toronto Cares is one of the easiest, barrier-free processes in the industry. No resumés, no interviews, no background checks, no lengthy training processes, and no ongoing commitments.

We encourage everyone to visit our website to complete the volunteer registration form. After which, volunteers will start to receive emails with the upcoming events and the sign-up spreadsheet in our Google Drive. All that's left is to comment with their name, phone number, and email address, then show up to the event on time… it's that easy!
We encourage everyone to visit our website to complete the volunteer registration form. After which, volunteers will start to receive emails with the upcoming events and the sign-up spreadsheet in our Google Drive. All that's left is to comment with their name, phone number, and email address, then show up to the event on time… it's that easy!

Toronto Cares’ mission is to offer services created by the people, for the people. We are an organization where the team making vital decisions about the direction and the services offered are actually in touch with what our clients live with on a daily basis.

This means that our Board of Directors and Advisory Council consist of ALL past or present clients and volunteers. We aim to have a minimum of 50% of our Board be people who have actual experience with homelessness, disabilities and/or mental health challenges, living in a low-income tax bracket, and are from other marginalized communities. In addition, all board members are required to attend a minimum of four events per year to meet the clients face to face.

We strongly believe that the ONLY people who have a right to make decisions about the services offered to our clients, are people who have either needed similar support at some point in their lives, or have spent a significant amount of time getting to know our target demographics on a human level.

Sarah Robinson grew up in a small town of 1,200 people in northeastern Ontario, in a stereotypical middle-income home with both parents and two siblings. Living with mental health challenges that began at an early age, during a time when nobody talked about such things, Sarah suffered in silence, judged by those closest to her who couldn't possibly understand what she was going through. At the age of 17, Sarah ran away from home, which is when the real struggles began.

From eating one meal a day for months at a time and surviving several abusive relationships, to eventually becoming homeless while fighting to understand her mental health, Sarah's early-adult years were filled with monumental challenges. Due to untreated mental health conditions for much of her life, Sarah has had three suicide attempts of her own, and has been surrounded by many other people facing similar circumstances. She's also faced a variety of addictions including but not limited to, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, eating and gambling. Instead of allowing these addictions to drag her down, overcoming these situations made her stronger and more determined, driving her to attend Sir Sanford Fleming College for their Drug and Alcohol Counseling program and Trent University for Psychology.

Sarah became a single mother at the age of 21, when at nine-months pregnant, her live-in boyfriend of 2 years struck her and left her lying in the driveway, the stress of which induced labor. Only five hours after giving birth to a healthy baby girl, she was visited in the hospital by Children's Aid Society, who notified her that the father of her child was a pedophile and could never be alone with their child. After 4 years of struggling with her mental health while raising her daughter alone, she made the difficult decision to let her parents take care of her daughter so that she could obtain intensive mental health support. After seven years of only seeing each other on holidays and the occasional weekend visit, she and her daughter were united under one roof once again.

At 27, Sarah suffered a spinal injury that would forever change her mobility, and directly contributed to her immense compassion for the struggles that people with physical and mental disabilities experience. Years later, she was finally approved for Ontario Disability Support Program, allowing her to go back to school at George Brown College, traveling two-hours on transit each way, while raising her 14-year-old daughter who was developing severe mental health and learning disabilities of her own.

On March 26th of 2020, during the first Covid-lockdown, Sarah took out a $1,000 payday loan in order to get in on the mass grocery shop panic-buying that the entire world was participating in, not knowing how long the lockdown would last, or how safe it would be to go outside of her home. Two days later, she realized she had no idea how she was going to pay back such a large sum on a fixed income.

Reaching out to a woman on Facebook who was looking for donors to support single moms, Sarah said “I'm not a donor, but I am a single mom and I'm really struggling right now to not go into a debt that I can't climb out of”. Within 30 minutes, that woman had given her email address to two women that ended up sending her a total of $200, no questions asked.

Deeply moved by the generosity of strangers, Sarah knew she had to find a way to pay it forward… she didn't have money, but she had time, skills, and had volunteered since she was in Girl Guides at five years old. Immediately, she made a Facebook post that simply read “If you need help, or you want to help, and you would like to stay anonymous, send me a message so I can connect you!”. Over the next two weeks, from her small basement apartment, Sarah made over 400 email transfer connections of $50 or more.

By April 30th, 2020, so many people had offered both financial and volunteering support, that Sarah made the executive decision to become an Incorporated nonprofit. Three years later, in record time, Toronto Cares Initiative became a registered Canadian charity.

Since the inception of Toronto Cares in 2020, Sarah and her team of volunteers have touched the lives of over 31,000 low-income and unhoused Torontonians, but for Sarah the challenges haven't subsided.

Refusing to take a salary from donations, Sarah was only been paid once, for 14-months through a government grant, over the last five years of running this small-but-mighty charity. This, paired with her daughter running away from home during a mental health break at the age of 17, has meant that there have been times when Sarah almost became homeless again herself. On more than one occasion, she has served meals to over 200 homeless in downtown Toronto's Moss Park community, only to come home and realize her own fridge was completely empty. In the same at-risk community, she's been physically attacked twice, both times leading to concussions that lasted for months. This past winter 2024-25, Sarah suffered from a 4-month debilitating depression.

Through many of the agencies that she now recommends to her clients, Sarah is thrilled to have built a strong support system for her mental and physical health, although she still struggles to survive on a fixed income, and is currently searching for a part-time position as an Outreach Worker, the part of the job she loves the most, to supplement her income so that she can continue to run this grassroots organization that she built from scratch.

In spite of everything that Sarah has faced throughout her 41 years of existence, she continues to be grateful for finding her purpose, to give a voice to those who are often forgotten, and to bring dignity to low-income and unhoused communities through her continued work leading Toronto Cares Initiative.