Winner of the 2009 Community Leaders Award for Community Leadership

Trent University Award for Community Leadership 2009 Recipient Goodith Heeney Watch Clip

 

GOODITH HEENEY

Building Relationships and Helping Others

Goodith Heeney was “honoured, surprised and humbled” when she found out she was the winner of the Trent University 2009 Community Leaders Award for Community Leadership. Ms. Heeney is a great friend to the Peterborough Community. She is a mother of four and a grandparent with her husband Bruce Lister to seventeen. Ms. Heeney has volunteered countless hours of service to assist people in need at different stages of their lives, from the early years to the final years. Her efforts have led to the establishment of organizations such as the Ontario Early Years Centre and Hospice Peterborough. Ms. Heeney has been the Founding Chairperson for “Friends of Kinark” for over a decade, is currently a Community Advisor for YWCA Crossroads Safe Haven Campaign, and a coordinator of the Community Lunch Program for St. John’s Anglican Church.

Trent University brought Ms. Heeney to Peterborough with her late husband Brian Heeney, History Professor, Master of Champlain College and later Academic Vice President and Provost in 1971.

Over tea in her kitchen she talks about all the wonderful friends she has made. She loves Peterborough and describes it as a wonderful community full of generous people. “If you have an idea here, people coalesce. You can do more than just dream.” On winning the Community Leadership Award, she adds, “First of all, it’s not work and, secondly, it’s not about me. It’s all about building relationships. The reward is the friendships and being able to give back to the community. I look around me and think of how I might be useful I get enthusiastic and encourage others to join the fun.”

A small group of parents got organized around a living room in the 1970’s, sharing common interests in raising happy, healthy children. Ms. Heeney helped to secure the initial seed funding from the Ontario Government for what is now the Peterborough Family Resource Centre, which offers courses and support to parents and children in the Peterborough Community.

A Youth Court Support Worker for the John Howard Society for eight years, Ms. Heeney assisted young individuals and their families who were faced with having to navigate the criminal justice system and accompanied them to court. She became aware of the challenges of a system that was not user friendly.

Ms. Heeney is concerned about the marginalized, the poor, the disabled and their mental health but she doesn’t give in to the anxiety about differences in people. She looks them in the eye and recognizes their condition as human beings.

Ms. Heeney was 47 years old with four kids when her husband died and she was helped by so many people she couldn’t imagine how others without that kind of support could cope. Having experienced the care, love and support of so many friends and community members during her husband’s terminal illness, it seemed a natural reaction to advocate for community-based hospice in the Peterborough area. She passionately engaged others to join her in creating Hospice Peterborough in 1989. Ms. Heeney has been invited to speak often about hospice care to groups of medical students, at conferences and to the National Senate Committee on Palliative Care. She is a founding member of the board of the community Hospice Association of Ontario. “I had an idea and now the whole community owns it,” she says.

The Founding Chairperson of the Friends of Kinark, Ms. Heeney helped recruit citizens from across our community and developed the group that has supported advocacy at three levels of government for mental health needs of children and youth for over a decade. Ms. Heeney describes the Friends as a Booster Club for children with special needs. Under Ms. Heeney’s leadership the Friends have been extremely generous in supporting the Kinark Camping for Kids Program. Over the last six years over 100 children have attended local camps through the program. The Friends launched the Kinark Discretionary Fund which provides exceptional resources to families in need. In 2005 the Friends developed a “Goodith Heeney Fund” for professional development and training opportunities for Kinark employees. In less than six months, the fund attracted $60,000, surpassing its original goal of $25,000.

Fellow calendar girl Rosemary Ganley refers to Ms. Heeney as Peterborough’s leading volunteer. Ms. Heeney was a Calendar Girl in The Age of Beauty: Women for Flood Relief 2005-2006: Celebrating the Spirit of Peterborough. The project was created to raise funds for repair efforts after the Peterborough flood in 2004. “All those naked women!” Goodith recounts. “What a wonderful group of women.”

A member of St. John the Evangelist Church for decades, Ms. Heeney co-chaired a capital campaign for structural improvements, including the kitchen facilities where hungry guests now gather for the Saturday Community Lunch Program in which Ms. Heeney is one of the coordinators. About a hundred people come every Saturday to enjoy the lunch and build friendships. Some participate in an arts program and drama group.

Looking at a painting on her window ledge that she chose from a spring art show at the lunch, Ms. Heeney describes how taken she was by this image of the back of a school bus. Examining the detail in the painting she felt that there was something to it that someone knew that bus intimately. Upon speaking with the artist, from whom she purchased the painting, she was told that he lived in that bus for two and a half years. “You see, I knew there was a story,” she says.