Every Thursday, we will be sharing stories from our Sinai Health community who have been instrumental in helping our Champions of Care respond to the COVID-19 crisis. Every donor who has supported the Sinai Health CEO Fund is providing critical support to the emerging needs of our front-line staff and hospitals.
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Q & A with Raquel Feldberg
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Raquel Feldberg, a patient of Mount Sinai Hospital’s Zane Cohen Centre for Digestive Diseases, has launched a new fundraising initiative with Alan Feldberg, her husband and business partner, to honour students who are graduating in 2020, while also supporting the front-line health-care workers at Sinai Health.
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The Feldberg Team, with Forest Hill Real Estate Central in Toronto, has designed custom lawn signs for the Class of 2020, celebrating the accomplishments of all grads at a time when other means of celebration are falling short. The Class of 2020 lawn signs, which include the graduate’s name, are popping up throughout neighbourhoods in Toronto, adding a splash of colour to the streets.
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All proceeds from the sale of the lawn signs are being donated to Sinai Health to help front-line health-care workers stay healthy as they work through the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Order a customized grad sign here and support Sinai Health’s front-line workers. The Feldberg Team’s Class of 2020 Lawn Sign Fundraiser will continue until June. By special request, new lawn sign designs for all students finishing up the school year, plus lawn signs with a big “Thank You” to show support to all local heroes, have now been added to Feldberg Team’s production line.
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1) How did you get inspired to fundraise?
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Graduation is a monumental event in children’s lives and a rite of passage which leads our youth into adulthood. Secondary or post-secondary graduates in 2020 will not be able to enjoy a prom or convocation due to the pandemic. We have two kids, both are graduating this year our son from Ivey Business School and our daughter from North Toronto Collegiate Institute. Sadly, neither of our kids will be attending graduation or prom. We felt that our children, and so many other kids like them, are losing out on an important milestone event.
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2) What inspired you to support Sinai Health?
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Every sign of ours has two sides to our story one side is to highlight and celebrate the grad, the other is to honour all local heroes, but, specifically the front-line health-care workers at Mount Sinai Hospital. The Emergency Department at Mount Sinai is a place I have visited many times, receiving special care for ulcerative colitis, and being in the company of amazing health care workers, nurses and doctors. Helping them get through this challenging time is something Alan and I needed to do.
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The more we worked on creating this initiative, the more the correlation between our kids, all graduates, and the front-line health-care workers made sense to us. Perseverance is the foundation behind the idea of supporting these dedicated, strong, and resilient individuals.
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3) What would you say to the front-line health-care workers providing life-saving care?
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Thank you. We feel so grateful to the health-care workers taking care of patients at this frightening time. They are in the eye of the storm. I know what it’s like to experience the one-on-one care from nurses and doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital and can honestly say their jobs are like no other and their dedication to patients is unwavering. It’s who they are.
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4) What are you doing to remain positive and connected to people during these challenging times?
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It’s been a great initiative and coping mechanism for us during COVID-19! Trying to do something for kids while helping the front-line health-care workers has allowed us to feel not so small during this humongous situation.
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We have also had the pleasure of meeting many new people over the last couple of weeks while practicing our social distancing pick-up procedure. In real estate, we are constantly working with new people and we’ve been missing that. It has been a wonderful experience overall.