A Tribute to Rani Rivera

A Tribute to Rani Rivera

By Criss Habal-Brosek
Executive Director, Progress Place/Weston Mount Dennis Community Place Hub

(Editor’s Note: In their grief over the death of their youngest child, Joe and Patty Rivera find comfort in knowing that Rani’s short-lived life left a profound impact on the people she had touched.

“We didn’t know she was an activist,” Joe says upon their discovery of this aspect of Rani’s life. They learned only upon her death.
Tributes from children, community members, and staff she worked with poured in during the funeral visitation and church ceremony — testaments of the beautiful caring life Rani lived during her final years.

Criss Habal-Brosek says it all in her eulogy at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church funeral service: “Rani didn’t work with us for a long time, but the impact she had on (our community) will last a lifetime.”

Following is her tribute:)

I wish to start by offering my sincere condolences to the Rivera family, Seth, friends

I have the honour of saying a few words about Rani

I met Rani in 2013 at the St. James Town, SJT, Community Corner Children’s Program. Progress Place had started a senior mental health program about a year before. Our paths would cross now and again, she worked after school hours and our program ran during the day. What I remember most about this time is that Rani organized an exchange program with students from SJT and Nunavut which was an amazing opportunity for the children, I am not sure Rani would have wanted to repeat this program given some of the unexpected excitement of children taking off on a snow mobile. However Rani did get through the exchange with her typical quiet grace in front of the children while venting to her colleagues.

Children wrote her many letters thanking her for organizing the trip, even though it was a year ago the children in Nunavut wrote another letter as they remembered their amazing opportunity.

Rani’s contract ended in SJT in 2014, as we were hiring for Progress Place’s social recreation program and working on partnering with a private landlord, Weston Property and Regeneration Community Service in the Weston Mount Dennis area
Progress Place hired Rani to initially work part time, she immediately embraced the values and philosophy of the organization.

Rani Rivera with Food Service participants

She worked hard, engaged with many members to help out in the program and participate in the social program. She had a natural intuitive response to many things. At the core of all her interactions you would always find Rani to be respectful, interacting with everyone and most often smiling her big Rani smile.

Given that Rani was doing such an amazing job at Progress Place we hired her to help us in the Weston Mount Dennis, WMD, Hub development. We had decided to model ourselves after the SJT Community Corner Hub providing community services to residents of all ages while providing people with health access.

Rani knew the model and was very enthusiastic about it so we asked her if she would like to help us launch the program. The majority of the work was around engaging the community, residents and service providers. She along with a small team engaged over 800 people in just 6 weeks.

Roslyn from Weston Property retrofitted a space and transformed an indoor pool into a community hub because of the successful community engagement.

Rani with Mental Health Foundation participants

We opened the doors April 2015 and in just 1 year we saw over 1,000 people. We have approximately 20 service provider partners who work with us to bring supports and services to the Hub as requested by them. We have offered over 50 programs in the first year. That gives you a sense of the work that Rani was doing. She would hear about an idea and run with it. She loved connecting and collaborating with various service partners to meet the needs of the community.

PP nominated Rani to a working group with peers and professionals with lived mental health experience to enhance capacity of individuals using addiction and mental health services to participate in planning, evaluation and delivery of services in the TC LHIN. Rani very much enjoyed connecting with this group

We had two Celebration’s of Rani’s life one at PP and the other at the WMD Hub, altogether between the 2 celebrations we had close to 200 people in attendance. That gives you a sense of the magnitude Rani had in her work and the impact on those she worked with.
I would like to share some of the comments that people told us about Rani during the Celebration’s of Life:

Rani was:

Friendly, lovely kind person, had one of the biggest smiles, always made time to talk to everyone, supportive, approachable, loved her bright lipstick and scarves, always put others before herself, good sense of humour, connected with both residents, children, service providers everyone, all in the spirit of collaboration. Dedicated, committed, poured her heart and soul into everything she did, passionate, humble, intelligent.

The Weston Mount Dennis Service Provider Network and Festival planning group met and decided to dedicate the festival to Rani in her honour. Rani wrote the grant and was thrilled to hear when it was funded. Please come out and join us on Fri., Sept. 23rd from 4 to 7.

Although Rani’s time with us was short her impact will be ever-lasting. Rani made a difference to people’s lives by caring and building community. Now it’s up to us to keep her work alive. Let’s do this together, work hard, connect, collaborate support one another and do the best we can in Rani’s honour.