Twice Upon a Time is thrilled to introduce our supporters to our new President, Audrey Lévesque-Aubut! Audrey brings her passion for children's literature, childhood literacy, and the Ottawa community to the Board, and we are so pleased to have her on the team. Read on to learn a bit more about Audrey:
Hello Twice Upon a Time friends and supporters! My name is Audrey Lévesque-Aubut. I’m from Chandler, a little town in Quebec, and I have lived in Ottawa since 2017 in Vanier. I have become very attached to my neighborhood and Ottawa, and I wanted to get more involved in my community through Twice Upon a Time. I have always loved to read. As a child, I spent hours reading. Our family didn’t have much money, so I borrowed books from my local library. My favorite book was "Les mémoires d’une sorcière" - I must have read that book a hundred times and I would always choose it if it was available at the library! It would have been amazing to have the book at home all the time and be able to read it whenever I wanted. As a mom, I cherish the moments with my child when we’re reading his favorite book. It explains why I think the work of Twice Upon a Time is important to me: to be able to help children and families in Ottawa to discover the wonder of literacy and to read their favorite books all the time. I’m very happy to be part of this wonderful organization and to share my love for books and reading. I would like to help Twice Upon a Time as it becomes more inclusive, collects more books in French and other languages, more Indigenous books, and more books about the LGBTQ2 community, and to assure the perennity of Twice Upon a Time as an environment where we can share our passion for books with children.
What.A.Year.
If you are anything like us, 2020’s trends of having to compromise, sacrifice and learn to deal with the unknown carried over to this year. However, we also had many opportunities to rejoice, and some changes that came our way were positive and bright.
For example, we had to say goodbye to two colleagues on our Board of Directors: Aswanth Ravindran, our past Treasurer; and Alexandra Yarrow, our founding President. These departures are bittersweet. They bring in promises of new beginnings for everyone leaving, as they embark on exciting new personal and professional ventures, as well as for all the new friends who are joining us on our path. We will have a chance to introduce to you Vishal Puri, our new Treasurer, and Audrey Lévesque-Aubut, our incoming President in the new year.
Similarly, our work at Twice Upon a Time continued with great success. Although we still cannot say when our weekly free bookstores will reopen, the COVID-19 service delivery model we developed back in Spring 2020 expanded quickly. We now count 21 partners able to deliver books safely to close to 3,000 children!
We are so grateful to have supporters like you making this work possible.
2021 also saw the tragic moments of too many unmarked graves being exposed on residential school sites. With the movement Every Child Matters grows, we were reminded of our responsibility to listen and to act, after offering a dignified burial to these children and communities the space to grieve. Twice Upon a Time is proud to have develop 2 new partnerships with the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation and the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation. Together with our long-time ally the Minwaashin Healing Lodge, they can offer free books we donate to approximately 370 children.
Inspired by this, today we embark on our 2022 Campaign: ReconciliAction: Best Kids’ Indigenous Books. Our goal is to offer Ottawa kids relevant materials by First Nations People, Métis and Inuit authors and featuring these communities’ stories, history, cultures, characters. We wish to expand our purchasing of books in this area with the help of Indigenous organizations’ representatives.
With your help, we can take charge of our collective commitment towards Reconciliation. We can impact children’s knowledge and understanding of each others’ cultures, contributions to society, and aspirations, early on so that, moving forward, next generations will know the truth and embody reconciliation themselves.
Thank you for your continued support.
Best wishes,
Stéphanie Plante
Vice-President, Twice Upon a Time
Are you passionate about reading, and about making a difference in your local community? Do you love working with others and planning creative projects to share your passions? Are you interested in making connections with other charities in Ottawa to work together to help local kids? Twice Upon a Time is looking for a new President, and if this interests you, please visit Volunteer Ottawa to learn more.
The Twice Upon a Time 2020 Annual Report is now available. Click here to access the report.
It’s time for the Great Canadian Giving Challenge and to give your favorite charity the chance to win BIG! Throughout the month of June, all your donations to Twice Upon a Time will enter us in a draw to win $20,000, courtesy of CanadaHelps.org.
$25 allows us to buy approximately 3 new books. Can you imagine all the children we will make happy together if we win?! Please make your donation today, and thank you for your support!
Twice Upon a Time is seeking a new Treasurer for our Board! Details on this opportunity and the link to apply can be found on Volunteer Ottawa. If you have a passion for reading, want to help foster literacy skills in young children in our community, and have experience with financial control and budgeting, we'd love to hear from you.
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The 2021 Twice Upon a Time AGM will be held on Sunday, May 16, 2021 at 1:30 PM on Zoom. We’d be honoured to have you join us for our meeting. If you’d like to attend, please RSVP for the Zoom call-in information.
When we launched our Kids Today! The Most Popular New Children’s Books fundraising campaign at the end of 2019, we had no idea what was in store for us. The initial plan for the 2020 Kids Today! Project was to raise funds to purchase new books that truly responded to our little readers’ requests for the most popular books published in recent years. 2020 had other plans, however, and our Kids Today! campaign shifted focus onto getting kids the books they want to read but in entirely new ways than we had done in the past.
Since summer 2020, Twice Upon a Time has been working with community partners (13 to date) to send books to kids. We aren't able to operate our normal free bookstores - something we miss tremendously - but with the help of other amazing organizations in the city, we've been able to provide books to many children.
While we look forward to one day being able to open our free bookstores, we're keeping the health and safety our Ottawa’s citizens as a top priority. This year, for the foreseeable future, we'll be continuing our work with community partners to delivery free books to kids in the safest ways possible. During Kids Today! Year 2, we're continuing our fundraising efforts to purchase wonderful high quality, diverse, exciting, and popular books for Ottawa children. Thank you for all your support in the last year, and we look forward to keeping you updated on new deliveries in 2021!
The Twice Upon a Time AGM that was previously scheduled for spring of this year will now be held on Sunday, September 20, 2020 at 2:00 PM. Similar to many other organizations, we'll be holding this meeting virtually to help support physical distancing efforts and keep our board members, volunteers, and community healthy.
We'd be honoured to have you join us for our meeting. If you'd like to attend, please see our Agenda for the Zoom call-in information. We'd invite you as well to review our 2019 Annual Report.
Since the temporary shutdown of our regular locations, Twice Upon a Time has looked at ways to continue bringing the joy of reading to Ottawa children. We have teamed up with several community organizations and health centres to provide them with new books to distribute directly to their clients: it’s our Kids Today! Special COVID-19 Project!
We are truly honoured to partner with these organizations. They are dedicated to supporting their communities through this crisis and beyond. We thank them!
Help us make books available to some of Ottawa’s most vulnerable children. Books our young readers will love, especially in this time of social isolation and school closures.
To make a tax deductible donation today go to: https://twiceuponatime.ca/get-involved/make-a-donation/
If your organization would like to partner with Twice Upon a Time for book delivery, please get in touch!