TL;WR
Hi. Welcome to the first-ever TL;WR with no events in. We're all staying in to flatten the curve and protect at-risk friends and neighbours. Staying in doesn't mean you have to lose connections with our awesome community.
We've compiled a list of resources on giving back and getting engaged from home. If you have kids at home, there's also a list of things to keep them occupied while you're on that video chat.
We'll update next week with more ideas. Have something we missed? Reply to this email and we'll get it added.
- Alex and the TL;WR team
How to help.
Supporting your neighbours
Jennifer L from the Family and Children's Services of the Waterloo Region Foundation shared some tips for helping out -
Become a monthly donor. Turn what you were spending on weekly take-out coffees and lunches into something more impactful by making a monthly gift.
Look for creative ways to continue to raise funds. The foundation uses Canada Helps for online donations. There are also sites that let you do an online auction instead of an in-person event.
Consider making a gift in honour of a special someone - Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and graduations are just around the corner. A gift to a charity in the name of your loved one is a beautiful way to recognize life events.
Mike P. sent over this list of charities that need help too -
Supporting local businesses
We're all be good and not going out - but that doesn't mean you can't still support your local businesses. Consider buying a gift card at some of your favourite places. You'll get to spend it when all this over and you'll be helping our local business
You can buy gift cards and memberships from the Apollo Cinema
Gifted and Arabella Park can offer gift cards via email
Four All Ice Cream has a bunch of gift card bundles with Apollo, Good Hair Co. and TWB Brewing Co-op.
Words Worth Books has discounted delivery
Cafe Pyrus has free delivery - or order for pickup too.
Graeme H. and a few others have made a list of local businesses with listings on how to buy a gift card and info on if they deliver
Things to do (at home).
Artshine in a Box is great way to get your kids (or yourself, no judgement. -Ed.) some awesome art education. They offer a subscription service where when you buy a box, they gift a box to a child in need.
You can add SnapChat filters on your video chat calls when you work from home.
They're more than just book fairs (and we love book fairs. -Ed.) Scholastic has a full resource of learn-at-home resources for Kindergarten through grade 12.
StudioJJK is running daily live art education webcasts at 2 PM EST.
Wes Bos has a free course called #JavaScript30 with 30 JavaScript coding challenges to tackle. No compiler needed.
Your Kitchener Public Library card gets you free downloadable music from Freegal and Hoopla Digital. Learn more here.
Social distance can't stop a podcast. It just makes the audio quality a little less stellar. In this week's TL;WR Podcast we talked with Aaron Francis in @someonesstudio talking art, music and whether or not you need to know how to brake-dance to get into heaven.
Side notes.
Conway Fraser's "5 Ways to Communicate Effectively This Week".
Canada, here’s how we are going to survive this pandemic together. (via Globe and Mail)
Kitchener church to transform from holy space to affordable place (via The Record)
‘Women don’t like going to the malls anymore’: LOFT 106 brings unique clothing to Waterloo (via The Record)
David Whiteside is running a #14DaysOfOptimism Twitter project - day 1 is up.
Region of Waterloo Public Health - all your local health news in one spot.