About the Program
Ron & Joyce Shantz
Founders of Front Line Outreach
How It Began
We started the Joining Hands Program in response to a need in the community. We were asked by the Halton Region to take what we had been doing in south Oakville on Kerr Street and apply it to an at-risk, unsettled community in north Oakville that had the highest number of calls for service to the police than another other community in Halton Region.
We agreed to try, even though we had no road map to follow, no proven model to apply. We just had our experience in successfully making a difference through the building of relationships. So that is what we did.
We set about figuring out how to build relationships in the community, to come alongside the residents, building trust, and slowly starting to change lives. Through the building of relationships we were able to build better, stronger communities.
Ten years ago we started to build the programs and activities that evolved into the Joining Hands Program, which over time has become a proven approach that we have replicated in other at-risk Communities across Halton, and in other regions.
A key part of our approach has been the partnerships we have built with organizations in the community, and most critically, with churches of all denominations. For the act of building relationships is primarily through the volunteers who invest their time and commitment to come along beside the residents, to get to know them and to share life with them. As in all meaningful acts of volunteering, the benefits go both ways, to those receiving and to those giving. We have found that it indeed takes many hands to build a community.
Today, we are involved in 21 at-risk communities in Halton Region, Brantford, and Toronto. We have seen a positive impact in all the communities we are working with, in the lives of the residents, as well as a decline in calls to service to the police and a decline in vandalism in the communities. Check out What People Are Saying About The Program.
It is our desire is to extend the impact of the Joining Hands Program so that every at-risk Community in Canada and the US can benefit from a similar experience, and collectively, we can make a real and profound difference in the communities where we live, and in the lives of our neighbours. Please join us in starting to change the world we live in, one community at a time.