The Community Services Recovery Fund was a $400 million investment from the Government of Canada to support charities and non-profits as they focus on how to adapt their organizations for pandemic recovery.
Founded nearly 40 years ago, ‘AVENS – A Community for Seniors’ is a seniors’ care campus in Yellowknife, originally created to meet the needs of the soon-to-be retired local miners and prospectors. Today, AVENS provides long-term, dementia, and independent housing solutions to the local community.
The COVID-19 pandemic posed a significant challenge for long-term care facilities across Canada, and Yellowknife was no exception. In October 2021, the Northwest Territories had the highest rate of active COVID-19 cases in Canada, despite its comparatively small population of 45,500 people, half of whom reside in Yellowknife.
However, before 2021, the Northwest Territories managed to keep its COVID-19 cases at bay. AVENS CEO Daryl Dolynny says that the Government of the Northwest Territories was “very prudent” in imposing borders early on during the pandemic, which was “paramount to the success we have now.” In fact, AVENS’ staff were able to keep the spread of COVID-19 at bay for two and a half years.
“COVID taught us a lot in long-term care,” Dolynny says. “We talked about the vulnerability of our sector and the fact that a lot of us weren’t prepared for a long, drawn-out pandemic like that.”
Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic
The experience prompted AVENS to rethink its approach to resident care, Dolynny says, with one of the key lessons being the detrimental effect of isolation on residents’ mental health, resulting in depression and a decline in cognitive ability. To combat this, AVENS opened a commercial greenhouse on its property, where residents and staff could garden together and grow fresh food. “There’s nothing better than getting your hands dirty,” Dolynny says.
Before the pandemic, Dolynny and his team embarked on an ambitious project to build 102 units of affordable housing for seniors through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. When considering which services to add-on to the new campus, “the premise is always about choice,” Dolynny says. “How can we provide more choices to seniors, and how do we empower seniors?”
Dolynny says that food is one of the first choices that comes to mind. A key part of this new affordable housing development is to be a meal program, ‘AVENS Eat’, offering a range of meals for clients to select from.
Securing a grant from the Community Services Recovery Fund
At this time, Dolynny and his team came across the Community Services Recovery Fund (CSRF): a $400 million investment from the Government of Canada to support community service organizations in recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Along with a partnership with Sysco’s MealSuite program, AVENS was able to leverage CSRF funding to “leap-frog” its meal delivery program, Dolynny says, going “beyond what we’ve ever thought was imaginable as a facility that someone may say is ‘in the boonies’.” He adds that the meal-delivery technology “really allows that sophistication to meet the traditional and cultural element that we deal with everyday,” calling Yellowknife a “melting pot”: 24 percent of Yellowknife’s residents are Indigenous, while the largest racialized group are Filipino, representing 6.9% of the population.
Meal choices are just the beginning. As part of its ‘aging in place’ initiative for its independently-housed clients, AVENS plans to expand into services like laundry and housekeeping.
Despite this, AVENS has faced several challenges during the pandemic, including slowing down the construction of the 102 units due to supply-chain issues. “We had all kinds of problems at our disposal, but we survived, and we got through it,” Dolynny says.
In 2023, AVENS faced another challenge when a wildfire evacuation required the relocation of 57 residents to Edmonton. “I think if we didn’t have the pandemic to teach us a few tricks, the evacuation would have been a lot more devastating,” Dolynny says. “I can say that we are a better organization today than we were in 2019 and 2020.”
Dolynny says he’s thankful for the CSRF which allowed the team implement changes that would have otherwise taken years, and for companies like Sysco that were willing to “beta test” their support of a relatively remote organization.
“We’re showing the world that you can do this anywhere, as long as you’ve got financial support and you’ve got people who believe in you,” Dolynny says. “Maybe one day, if I’m still here as CEO, we see little vans running around providing meal options for seniors throughout the North. Who knows? That would be something pretty cool.”
