(upbeat music)
- Hey everybody, I'm here in Toronto
at project Winter Survival.
I try to come every year.
It first got connected through Scott Mills,
who is a Toronto police officer.
He's also on Invisible People Support,
he's a great friend and how we first connected,
is Scott used to take gain kids
and find businesses where the kids could do graffiti
without getting in trouble.
And one of the kids did this mural behind me
after watching every single Invisible People video.
The mural has faded over the years,
but this event keeps going.
Project Winter Survival makes kits that includes
sleeping bags, a backpack with all kinds of stuff
like gloves and socks and hand warmers.
They give the kits to non-profits
and even Toronto police who have a big presence here
volunteer to put the kits together
and they give out these kits to homeless people in Toronto.
Obviously it's freezing cold.
I was out on the streets yesterday,
we'll be out later today,
I can't believe people are living outside.
It's so good, amazing, grateful that Jody
and everyone participates in this event.
- So when you get up in the morning and you complain
because your feet are cold, you can't find your slippers,
I want you to think about people that are out on the street.
People that have no bed.
People that have no slippers
that are outside sleeping on a grate.
That are outside sleeping anywhere.
- 92 hundred people are reported to be homeless
on our streets in the GTA,
and that's a 60% percent increase since 2014.
And for those of you in the sector
you know that that number is far too low.
It's really a lot more.
So what we're doing today,
I don't want to be doing next year.
I'm a business owner.
I have to run a charity now,
because people are dying and what you're doing right now,
is saving lives.
So I want everybody here, to tell their friends
tell their families, tell their co-workers
that we have to stop homelessness.
There is a cure for homelessness
and we know what it is.
It's affordable housing with support services, period.
(melancholic music)
- This is my friend Jody, she is the founder
of Engage and Change and Kids for a Cause,
and what are we doing here today?
- Right now, we have just packed
three thousand survival kits for 240 homeless shelters
and we're coming on downtown now to do outreach
for one of the shelters 'cause Mark loves doing outreach
and we're gonna make some people really happy
who are really suffering with the supplies
in these survival kits.
- Tell me what's in a kit.
- Most importantly a sleeping bag
and then a turque, gloves and socks
to help survive Toronto's winter.
Hygiene kits, food, pad and pen,
stimulating game to stimulate their mind
and just a couple of other things to make them happy.
- Well what's interesting about what Jody does,
and you've been doing it for..
- 21 years.
- Wait, what?
- 21 years. - 21 years, yeah.
- 21 years, what's great about what Jody does is,
well there's a lot of things
but one of the things I really love is
they make these kits,
it connects the community it gets them involved
but then you give them to non-profits
and the Toronto police department to give out.
- They're the experts.
They're the social workers, they need the bridge
and the tools to connect with the clients
and they're the ones who really get them out
of the cycles of poverty, not me.
- I know this year, the homeless memorial
put their one thousandth name on.
- Yep, yep.
- People are dying out here.
- People are dying and it's wrong.
This is a very very rich country we live in
and the numbers are getting worse and worse every day.
- I get emotional thinking about
how people sleep outside in the snow.
- Yeah and how many people and deaths haven't been reported.
I mean a thousand is a very low number
which most people will tell you.
It's brutal.
We're standing out here for just a couple of minutes
and Mark's shaking right now next to me.
- I am, I don't have my glove on.
- He's shaking but you know, we're grateful
but I encourage business leaders like myself,
this is a problem, it's not the governments problem,
it's our problem and we got to think about it
as a business model, how do we fix this as business leaders?
- And you might not live in the frozen north,
you could be in - In LA.
- In LA and weather gets cold and people outside
and they die. - Yeah, yeah.
- And we have to get people off the streets
into housing and until that happens,
we have to be able to make sure people don't die outside.
- Yeah this is a bandaid
and every year I say, "I don't want to be doing this.
"Not at all"
but you know what?
Until everybody is housed
and that we don't have homeless people
freezing to death on our streets,
we have committed as a community as business leaders
to keep this going.
- Thank you Jody.
- Thank you Mark.
Thank you for visiting us and giving me the inspiration
to keep on doing what I'm doing.
- Me?
- Yeah you inspire me.
- Last night when we were in the shelter bus
when a gentlemen there having coffee,
he said, "You sound familiar"
and he goes "You sound like some guy that goes around
"Canada making videos"
And he was talking about Invisible People, I'm honored.
- Incredible work, so. - Thank you.
Thank you everybody.
- Thank you.
(slow electronic music)