A bus with Ontario Northland has found new life.
Ontario Northland announced Friday that they would be donating a used motorcoach to Humanity First Shelter Bus.
“We have been working with Naeem Farooqi on a number of other initiatives,” Ontario Northland President and CEO Corina Moore said. “This is something that he does and is passionate about and he came to us with an opportunity to donate one of our buses. When our buses are end of life for passenger trips, there is still lots of life in them.”
“When he brought this to us, it was a no brainer for us to give back to the communities we are in,” Moore continued. “We know how terribly cold it is in northern Ontario during the winter months and to be able to provide a safe and warm place for those in need, we’re so grateful to be a part of it.”
Farooqi is the Project Director and Founder of Humanity First Shelter Bus.
“I have had the opportunity to work with various cities around the world,” Farooqi stated. “One of the things I help them with is deciding when to retire buses, and I noticed a lot of them have a lot of life in them. Working at Yonge and Eglinton in Toronto, I see homelessness every day when I walk to my office, so I tried to connect those dots.”
“About a year and a half ago we approached Humanity First about bringing this idea to their platform,” Farooqi added. “Since then we have launched our first bus, and we are grateful Ontario Northland donated the second bus and we are looking for partners in northern Ontario that will come out and help us run this bus every night.”
The seats on the bus will be taken out to be replaced with more of a dinette that will resemble the interior of a train car says Farooqi. The whole process can take up to seven months.
“The seats will face each other that convert to beds overnight,” Farooqi explained. “Our first bus has 44 seating and then 20-bed conversions, and we will be doing something similar with this bus. Our first bus is dedicated to Toronto and we see 60 to 90 people a night.”
“Quite often we look at other parts in the world that are in need,” Moore said. “In our backyard, we are in need of something like this. We are grateful and proud to be a part of it, it is really important. We’re going to continue to work together and when there is an opportunity to provide more buses, we will do so.”
