Deacon Legacy Grants

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Fundholders past and present create lasting change

Deacon Legacy Grants are inspired by our founders, Fraser and Frances Deacon, who made sure that philanthropy would always have a home in Toronto. These multi-year, unrestricted grants support high-impact local organizations working to reduce social and economic divides.

Deacon Legacy Grants are enabled by the endowments of many donors, past and present, who entrust Toronto Foundation to steward their philanthropic aspirations. We hope they will inspire future donors to leave their legacies in our care.

Stepping Up

Young people need safe and stimulating places to grow, belong and contribute. These grants support organizations that provide recreational programming for children and youth up to 18 years old to create space and opportunities to make change together.

Caribbean African Canadian Social Services

Caribbean African Canadian Social Services (CAFCAN) provides culturally appropriate social services to enrich the lives of the African, Caribbean and Diasporic (ACD) communities in the GTA and beyond. CAFCAN’s primary focus is supporting children, youth and families through culturally safe individual and group counseling, case management services, employment services, youth mentorship and outreach programs.

CAFCAN is the only community-based social service Black-led, Black-serving and Black focused/mandated (B3) organization for infant, child and youth mental health.

Children’s Peace Theatre

Children’s Peace Theatre (CPT) uses an arts-based, intergenerational and holistic approach to cultivate ecological, social and spiritual resilience within the individual and the community.

Their work is centered on three key pillars: art as a spiritual practice, knowledge transfer and right relations; and rooted in decolonization and abolition frameworks. CPT prioritizes centering the voices of Black and Indigenous communities to co-create innovative solutions to the challenges and systemic oppressions they face.

CPT is rooted in the idea of non-hierarchical leadership and believes in using its platform to support others including trusteeing 15 other groups.

Horizons for Youth

Horizons for Youth is more than a youth shelter. To help at-risk and homeless youth escape from the cycle of poverty and leave the streets behind, Horizons for Youth provides holistic support, life-changing programs and a home for as long as they need. Horizons for Youth’s mission is to prepare and guide homeless and at-risk youth to achieve wellness and become contributing community members.

In Toronto approximately 2,000 youth (16–24-year-olds) experience homelessness on any given night.

Source: The State of Homelessness in Canada 2016. Toronto: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness Press.

JAYU Festival Inc.

Jayu uses the arts to address human rights and social justice issues in Ontario and worldwide. Jayu advocates that the arts are the most effective way to share human rights stories because art educates, builds empathy, heals, forges community and inspires the kinds of conversations necessary to reimagine a more just and equitable world. Since 2018, Jayu has engaged over 1,000 youth in art, connecting them to paid opportunities and pathways in the arts.

In 2022 alone, 378 equity-seeking youth were supported through the mentorship and employment opportunities offered by JAYU’s iAM program.

Urban Nature

Climate change is here and we all have a role to play. The issues are complex but they need not hold us back. These grants support organizations that bring people together to learn and strengthen the city’s natural assets and physical environments for a healthy and sustainable tomorrow.

Clean Air Partnership

Clean Air Partnership (CAP) advances the implementation of actions to foster low-carbon, resilient communities. Their work enables communities to improve air quality, advance active transportation and take bold climate action. Additionally, the Centre for Active Transportation at CAP, builds safer, healthier more equitable places by working with communities to create safer streets for walking and riding bikes.

Transportation is the second largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions in Toronto, making up 33% of all total emissions.

MABELLEarts

MABELLEarts is redefining the role of public space with MABELLEpark, the first park in Canada designed to respond to the needs of high-density, low-income tower communities. New park infrastructure and programming support local economic development and food security initiatives; the park will serve as a vitally needed greenspace in which residents can give and receive care to both nature and neighbours.

After securing a 20-year agreement with Toronto Community Housing, MABELLEarts will operate the park as a new kind of cultural venue and community development space to bring people together across real and perceived differences.

Pathways

The future of work is unpredictable and can be daunting for many. These grants support organizations that help ease the transitions from school to employment, equipping people with the skills and resilience to create pathways to fulfillment in work and in life.

Up With Women/Exponenti’elles 

Up With Women /Exponenti’elles supports low-income women and gender diverse individuals overcome the intersecting barriers they face to employment including poverty and housing precarity, through the transformative power of coaching. Up With Women’s free, year-long program pairs low-income women and gender diverse individuals with certified coaches, who support clients in building sustainable, prosperous careers and businesses with the aim of permanently exiting poverty.

66% of part-time workers and 52% of temporary job holders are women. A lack of economic power from secure, decent employment impacts a woman's ability to make autonomous decisions about safe, stable living arrangements.

VIBE Arts

VIBE Arts is committed to providing high-quality arts education in under-resourced communities and supporting youth artists facing systemic barriers to build a career in the arts. VIBE Arts works with partners, including those providing services in mental health and housing, to provide arts education and mentorship for a broad range of arts disciplines. Since 1995, VIBE Arts has been working to realize a future where every young person is equipped to contribute creatively to society.

VIBE Arts has a legacy of increasing access and equity to the arts as well as supporting the sector by platforming and trusteeing other arts nonprofits.

A lot (of impact) can happen in a year!

From cultural camps to new social infrastructure and a human rights film festival, the eight Deacon Legacy grantees share updates on some of their milestones during year one of this two-year granting stream. View these notable examples of how multi-year and unrestricted funding enables organizations to dream and deliver dynamic programs that propel communities forward, and of how we steward bequests for meaningful and equitable city building.

Caribbean African Canadian Social Services At the Kambi Ya Watoto summer camp children learned about their culture and participated in dance/movement workshops, drumming and a variety of games. Campers also put on a showcase for parents and caregivers to watch and share in what they learned.

Children's Peace Theatre Harmony's Sound Studio is our home-style recording studio, created to offer the opportunity to record quality audio to Black and Indigenous people who may otherwise not have access. We believe that sound is a powerful healing tool and seek to provide a supportive space for those who see it as a part of their healing journey. For those who have the means the studio offers a sliding scale payment system.

Children's Peace Theatre In 2023 Peace Camp participants presented ASHES EMBERS FLAMES. Every summer, Children's Peace Theatre runs a three-week Peace Camp where accomplished professional artists, youth and junior guides work with children aged 8-13 in a collaborative process to create an original production complete with a musical score and visual production pieces, based on explorations of relevant social issues and the children's visions of peace.

Clean Air Partnership Access to green space is widely considered a key indicator for mental, emotional and physical health. Yet while Toronto calls itself ‘A City Within a Park’, access to urban nature is not equal across regions. The ‘Understanding Access to Toronto’s Parks and Multiuse Trails’ study aims to understand who uses and benefits from Toronto’s parks and multiuse trails, to find solutions that improve access. In year one of the study, we established a baseline of where the barriers and opportunities for access to green spaces in the city are. Data was collected through public intercept surveys at 3 locations: The Meadoway, Humber River and Kay Gardiner Beltline In year two we are developing initiatives to address those barriers and act on opportunities.

Horizons for Youth. Our Cooking 101 classes teach valuable life skills that are essential for independent living. By learning how to cook nutritious meals on a budget, we are teaching our youth how they can stretch their limited resources further and make healthier choices. Basic cooking skills can open up job opportunities for youth in the food service industry, such as working in a restaurant, catering, or even starting a small food business.

JAYU Our annual Human Rights Arts Festival at HotDocs featured four film screenings, an exhibition and a poetry slam reaching an audience of 1300+.

JAYU The iAM Program Zine showcases the work of some of our youth artists. The iAM Program offers arts and social justice training for equity-deserving youth year-round. Participants receive mentorship from some of Toronto’s most talented artists, activists, and educators. 77% of our program participants reported an increased confidence in pursuing a career in the arts sector.

MABELLEArts We're in the final stretch of our capital project and will be moving into our new facility in August! We are proud to be introducing new social infrastructure in our low-income, racialized community at a moment when cultural and community spaces are so under threat. Deputy Mayor and City Councillor for Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Amber Morley, visited MABELLEpark in October 2023. She and her team have shown unwavering support for our work throughout the park transformation.

MABELLEArts We were also visited by the Honourable Filomena Tassi, Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, along with Members of Parliament James Maloney and Yvan Baker. During this visit, Minister Tassi announced further federal funding to support the continued transformation of MABELLEpark. We hosted our 14th Annual Iftar Nights Celebration - Mobile Iftar - during Ramadan in March 2024.

This past year, we’ve been proud to work alongside 300+ women and gender diverse individuals across four provinces. Our largest service population continues to be in the Greater Toronto Area. While we have a myriad of evidence for our clients’ progress, an important metric has always been the impact on clients’ income. Over half of our clients experienced income increases, while many others launched new businesses or went back to school. To maintain a high degree of client impact, we took time over the past year to ensure our core operations remain strong and sustainable. This has included investment in capacity-building and process improvement – both critical for realizing client impact.

VIBE Arts The Church Street Espresso initiative engaged the community in creating a multi-story mural on the exterior of the coffee shop. This project provided the artist with her first large-scale, solo opportunity and contributed to enlivening the streetscape while deterring graffiti. ‘The Story In Your Cup of Coffee’ features faraway landscapes, mountains, different stages of coffee plant growth and harvesting, and lastly and most importantly, the human who works tirelessly to tend to the plants and pick the beans. Lead artist Kseniya Tsoy (@ktsoy.art), Frannie Potts (@franniepotts) and Rob Matejka working on the community mural on the exterior of Church Street Espresso.

VIBE Arts An exhibition at Flemington Public School celebrating the work of grade 4 and 5 students following a digital photography program. During the program youth explored themes like community, identity and belonging through their photographs. The grant enabled us to deliver transformative arts programs in under-resourced neighbourhoods, positively impacting communities through creativity and empowerment.

Read about the 2020 Deacon Legacy Grants here.

We acknowledge we are on the traditional territories of the Huron-Wendat, the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. While Indigenous communities in Toronto remain strong, vibrant, and resilient, they need support to address and overcome the impact of colonialism and systemic inequalities. Furthering Indigenous reconciliation and sovereignty are integral to achieving a more fair and just society where everyone can thrive.

We aim to be an ally and to fund local Indigenous organizations.