COVID-19 RESPONSE
CENTENNIAL COLLEGE ANSWERS THE CALL
Centennial College has been an integral part of the Scarborough community in Toronto ever since we opened Ontario’s first college campus on Warden Avenue near Danforth back in 1966. We’ve grown over the years into a major postsecondary education institution, as well as one of Scarborough’s largest employers. Centennial has always been committed to the success of our students, but we know that we also have a responsibility to the larger community we live and work in.
Helping our health care providers. As a long-established educator of nurses, paramedics and other health care practitioners, Centennial has a professional learning environment at Morningside Campus where medical supplies for our nursing and health care labs are kept. We have additional personal protection equipment at our School of Engineering Technology and Applied Science, and our School of Transportation.
With live labs cancelled for the foreseeable future, we have cleared out our supplies and donated them to our Scarborough hospitals to help keep the health care staff there safe during their long days and nights serving patients. Our donation items include much-needed surgical gowns, safety goggles, N95 and procedural masks, Tyvek isolation suits and disposable gloves. We are also donating 500 masks that our partners at Suzhou Centennial College in China have shipped to us.
In addition to the supplies, we have returned three ventilators to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, which they had previously donated to us, to be put back into lifesaving service. Our sincere thanks to our shipping/receiving team for coordinating the delivery of these vital supplies, as well as the collaborative efforts of all our Centennial schools that assembled these materials.
Feeding members of the community. Our School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts has worked with Second Harvest to donate essential food supplies for distribution to those in need during this difficult time. Donated food items, which normally would be used in our culinary labs and The Local Café and Restaurant, include milk, eggs, cheese, yogurt, frozen meats and seafood, as well as shelf-stable items such as cereals and canned products such as tomatoes, beans and more. The School has also donated commercial bags of flour, rice and other essential grains.
“Second Harvest will break down these commercially-sized items and portion them for families and individuals in need and distribute them all over Toronto,” says Joe Baker, Dean of Centennial’s School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts. “We have donated the contents of the School’s commercial refrigerators, freezers and dry storage areas. To provide a visual of this quantity of food, it will fill half of Second Harvest’s big refrigerated truck.”
Answering the call in a time of need. Centennial is proud to be able to contribute to vital initiatives that will help save lives and reduce hunger and suffering by families and individuals wracked by the present pandemic and the economic upheaval that’s come with it.
By working together with our partners, we’re thrilled to step up in a significant way to help protect the most vulnerable members of our community, as well as the amazing heroes working in our critical health care system.
Centennial College facilities are currently closed and the College has moved to Teaching at a Distance. Please visit www.centennialcollege.ca for regular updates.