Raising the Roof is pleased to announce the approval of grant funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF), received on August 4, 2016. The Foundation has generously donated $75,000 in support of the organization’s youth homelessness prevention program: The Upstream Project.

The Upstream Project supports vulnerable youth before they experience homelessness by working with the school system. We know that for young people faced with homelessness, the risk of school drop-out, involvement in crime, and family breakdown is disproportionately increased. By intervening when youth are at-risk, we are able to prevent homelessness, providing young people with the support they need to graduate from high-school and transition successfully into the next stage of their lives.

As a result of OTF’s support, The Upstream Project is being piloted in two Ontario communities beginning in September 2016. This will be done through collective work with our collaborative partners at the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness and A Way Home Canada, as well as our community partner agencies 360kids (York Region) and The RAFT (Niagara Region).

This funding was received as part of OTF’s SEED funding, an investment stream focused on “the development of new ideas and different approaches to achieving results”. The goal of the pilot phase of The Upstream Project is to develop an evidence-base that indicates prevention as a better way to address youth homelessness. Raising the Roof then aims to scale this program nationally.

For more information on The Upstream Project, click here.

An agency of the Government of Ontario, the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) is one of Canada’s largest granting foundations. With a budget of over $136 million, OTF awards grants to some 1,000 projects every year to build healthy and vibrant Ontario communities.  For more information, please visit: www.otf.ca