Dear Members of the Trek for Teens Community,
As you know, the situation with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has been accelerating rapidly. We have been monitoring the situation very closely and we have been liaising with public authorities, healthcare organizations, our partner shelters, educational institutions, and members of our community.
We want to ensure the health and safety of our volunteers and participants, as well as the homeless youth, shelters, and communities we support. After careful consideration of the developments in the last few days and in consultation with the Executive team, the Trek for Teens Board has arrived at the following decision to cancel all in-person events across all of our Regions until the end of our fiscal year (June 30, 2020), at which time we will reassess the situation. We hope to continue raising funds and awareness for homeless youth through virtual platforms.
One of the key factors in this decision is the need to foster a degree of “social distancing”, as recommended by public health authorities. On that front, our goal is to help interrupt the chain of transmission in the wider community, thereby protecting vulnerable individuals and ensuring that our health care system will not become overburdened.
We also want to make a special note to remind everyone that the homeless youth and the shelters we support are particularly vulnerable at this time. The Board and the Executives will be working closely with the Regional and Departmental teams to adapt to this new challenge and continue to uphold our mission. We want to encourage all of our members to work together to develop creative new ways to support homeless youth during this outbreak, so that we can all overcome this challenge together.
We will continue to provide more updates in the coming days on how you can best support homeless youth in your communities.
Sincerely,
Michael C. F. Bazzocchi, PhD
On behalf of the Trek for Teens Foundation Board of Directors