Serve Toronto kids tackle tough chores for Downtown mission week

By Eric Morse –

Serve Toronto culminated July 27 with a major paint-in at Little Trinity Anglican, the host church.

On July 27, the grounds of the Little Trinity Church at King and Parliament were absolutely swarming with teens wearing brightly-coloured tees and armed with paintbrushes, rollers and implements of construction, beavering away madly at the outside steps and wheelchair ramp.

It’s the culmination of Serve Toronto, when for four days 65 young people and their chaperones from Toronto, Minnesota and North Dakota came together at Little Trinity Church to do good works in the Downtown core.

The project falls under the auspices of Youth Unlimited, a non-denominational Christian program in Canada and the Unites States. It originated in 1919 as the American Federation of Reformed Young Men’s Society.

The current organization focuses on enabling teenagers to be involved on community service, Little Trinity’s youth pastor Lisa Vander Leek explained to The Bulletin.

“They’ve been serving meals at the Salvation Army, the Christian Resource Centre, the Followers Mission and St John the Compassionate,” listed Vander Leek. “They’ve been clearing garbage. Changing beds at a few men’s hostels. They’ve been doing a lot of painting for CRC and Followers; they’ve been helping unload trucks for food banks. They’ve been at the Seafarers Mission down in the Port Lands and at Mustard Seed Mission on Queen East gardening and doing cleaning and odd jobs. And they’ve been going around in the streets handing out sandwiches to people who were hungry: on Thursday night alone they gave out 125 sandwiches.”

James Durand-Smith of the Seafarers’ Mission reported that about ten Serve Toronto kids showed up on July 26 and did a lot of cleanup, including some major weeding in a garden “which was kind of overgrown.”

Durand-Smith continued, “They were all very engaging and seemed to be happy to be out here doing good works for us and Serve Toronto.”

Claire Stephens, Katerina Meybaum and Nick Bonnema were all here through their youth group at Faith Christian Reform Church in Brighton, Minnesota, just outside Minneapolis. They’ve painted at CRC, served food at St John the Compassionate and the 40 Oak soup kitchen, and even folded laundry at the Good Shepherd mission.

The Midwestern trio was totally blown away by their first time in Canada. “We’re from suburban Minneapolis and the culture is just so different!”

This was Youth Unlimited’s first Serve week in Toronto. Vander Leek says that Little Trinity hopes to host the event annually.