Dear friends and neighbours,

As of September 17, we have raised $15,055* to support Friends of Chinatown TO’s organizing for the next year! This is more than we’ve EVER crowdfunded as a grassroots group. We are incredibly grateful for your continued support since 2019, and for those who made raising this huge amount possible! 

More than ever before, community members in Chinatown face exploitation, displacement, and violence at the hands of landlords, bad bosses, corporate property developers, police, and immigration officials. We believe that the only way we fight for better living and working conditions in our neighbourhood is by coming together as tenants, workers, and migrants to challenge power. Mutual aid plays an essential role in making sure we can take care of one another and allows us to collectively and sustainably organize against the systemic oppressions faced by our community. 

After fundraising for the past 10 weeks, we've had over 100 people contribute and almost 300 people attend our fundraiser event! But we’re still shy of our original $20,000 goal by $4945.

So we’re extending our fundraiser for one more week — starting today — to try and reach our goal by October 6th!

Your donations will go toward:

• Feeding community members at our monthly migrant worker drop-ins where we strategize around wage theft, landlord exploitation, and immigration issues in Chinatown 

• Our health justice workshops on accessing healthcare as migrant community members who are undocumented / without regularized status 

• Printing and material costs for political education flyers, banners, protest signs, etc.

• Administrative and tech costs for our zoom account, phone line, etc…

• Direct money transfers for migrant community members in emergency / crisis situations 

• And more!

We hope we can reach our goal next week with your help! The average contribution for this campaign across e-transfers and our online crowdfunder has been $58. But any contribution, regardless of the amount, counts towards the sustainability of our work. 

We've temporarily reopened our GoGetFunding campaign: https://gogetfunding.com/friends-of-chinatown-toronto-is-raising-funds-for-community-organizing/

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And if you'd like to help us avoid processing fees, you can etransfer to friendsofchinatownto@gmail.com

With love, gratitude, and in solidarity,

FOCT 💖

*The breakdown of funds raised is as follows:

• $4,325.12 from Wahjong Wednesdays and Moonlit Autumn Fundraiser - after event costs 

• $5,221.23 in donations from our GoGetFunding campaign - after processing fees 

• $5,508.88 in direct bank transfers from individuals and organizations (both e-transfers and cheques)

ps. If you’re receiving this email, it’s because you were previously subscribed to FOCT’s newsletter on Tinyletter! We’ve migrated to Buttondown because Tinyletter shut down earlier this year. If you’d like to unsubscribe you can do so at the link below.