By: Jamie Rhiness
Winner: The People of the Book
So you wake up to the street cars rattling above you, as they cross the bridge keeping you sheltered from the rain or snow.
Pigeons painfully cry in vein as they are pecked at by others. The dusty ground is contaminated with PCB’s. You don’t know if it’s this [...]

By: Heather-Ann Michie
Grand Prize Winner
Like a leaf trembling in the breeze, I find the courage to get off my mattress, leave my empty place, and head out into another cold wintry day, even though I feel down.
This day, I have change for the bus.  People are staring at me.  Maybe my coat needs cleaning or [...]

By: Leif Hernborg
Winner: The Ahad Ha’am Prize
My name is Leif. I am 43 years old and homeless for the second time in my life.
I am currently fortunate enough to be in residence at a city-run shelter called “Fort York” which gives 60-90 males opportunities to work and save money and keeps a lot of us [...]

We are proud to announce the inauguration of The Ve’ahavta Street Academy (VSA), a school for people living on or near the street. VSA was designed and will be overseen by the talented, Theresa Schrader, the winner of Ve’ahavta’s Creative Writing Contest for the Homeless in 2005.
Ve’ahavta is interested in presenting our vision of VSA [...]

Is it better to make a difference on your own or with a group? Does one make more of an impact?

Thank you to all the participants, donors, and volunteers of the 2010 Great T.O. Challenge! With your support this year’s event raised over $50,000 for Ve’ahavta’s homeless outreach initiatives.
A special thank you to the organizing committee of the GTO Challenge: Fran Grundman & David Taras (Co-Chairs), Maura Cooperberg, Shauna Merkur, Lisa Richman, Nancy Soberano, [...]

Ve’ahavta would like to express our gratitude to all the community members and groups for their enthusiasm and support for the Kinder Kit Project. In April and May we collected supplies and donations to send 3,000 Kinder Kits to Israel. The kits are now on their way to Israel so that needy children will be [...]

We are experiencing a higher than usual volume of donations and supplies. We need volunteers to sign-up for our on-call volunteer list to help with deliveries of supplies to us and shipments of donations out.
Please email volunteerinfo@veahavta.org to sign up.

Ve’ahavta will be recruiting up to 4 volunteers and 1 site coordinator for a two week placement in Israel this June as part of our Kinder Kit distribution project.  Volunteers will also be volunteering with Hazon Yeshaya Humanitarian Network in Jerusalem, assisting with programs that provide support to Israel’s poorest citizens.  We are looking for [...]

It is with great excitement that we announce Ve’ahavta’s Coffee House event for its 9th Annual Creative Writing Contest for People Living On or Near the Streets of Toronto and Vancouver.
Please join us at this *free event, meet our winning contestants, and listen to them read their riveting stories from life on the streets and [...]