🎁MIR Héritage Children's Gift Programme — registration is open. Next gift distribution: International Fest Canada Tour, Cambridge, 14–15 November. Free. Two minutes. Nothing to prove. Register now →

Children • Wellbeing • Community Voice

We go where families already are.

Fondation Mir Héritage works at festivals and in community rooms across Waterloo Region — putting gifts in children's hands, wellbeing support within reach of families, and community voices into the rooms where decisions get made.

Our Programmes Register Your Child Get Involved →

Our Commitment

Community First

We go where people already are, not where it is convenient for us to be.

Dignity Always

Nobody should have to prove hardship to be treated well. We ask no one to explain themselves.

Stronger Together

We work with the organisations and community leaders already trusted in this region.

Lasting Impact

We count what we do, we say what happened, and we publish it.

Community Voice

The people affected by a decision should be in the room where it is made.

Kitchener • Waterloo • Cambridge

Our Story

Who We Are

MIR Héritage was founded to stand with families in Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge — across faiths and cultures — and to make sure that help, when it comes, comes with dignity.

What we heard is that trouble rarely starts where it shows. It starts earlier, usually with health, and by the time a family is visibly struggling they have often already lost the work and are close to losing the home.

So we built our programmes at the points where we could be useful: gifts for children whose families are under pressure, and a way in to mental health and employment support for people who would not otherwise reach it.

Our Mission

Fondation Mir Héritage — children, wellbeing and community voice in Waterloo Region.

Our Vision

A Waterloo Region where no child is forgotten at Christmas, no one loses their home to an illness nobody helped them with, no family goes hungry — and every culture is celebrated.

More about us

Why we're at the festival

The families we exist for don't walk into offices.
They walk into festivals.

As a co-presenter of the International Fest Canada Tour, we bring our gift programme and our community wellbeing table to where thousands of people from a dozen communities already are — in a setting where nobody has to identify themselves as needing anything.

We take no share of the festival's revenue.

Children's Gift Programme

Families register in advance and every registered child receives a gift from us at the festival — every child, at every age. We hold gifts back by age band so that no child is handed something meant for someone years older or younger.

Age bands: 0–3 · 4–6 · 7–9 · 10–12 · 13–15 · 16–17

Donating? Teenagers are the group most collections leave out. If you are choosing what to give, a gift for a 13 to 17 year old is the one we are most likely to be short of.

Community Wellbeing Table

Staffed, in several languages, with clear information on mental health support, employment insurance and housing help. No forms. No registration. No names taken. Just someone to talk to, and somewhere to be pointed.

14–15 November 2026 · Polish Club of Cambridge

Community Voices

Public policy dialogue

Decisions about mental health services, employment supports and housing get made in rooms most families never enter. Community Voices puts those families in the room.

Each session brings together people with lived experience, frontline service providers, employers and public decision-makers for a moderated conversation on a single question. Two or three short presentations, then structured discussion. Thirty to sixty people — small enough that everyone speaks.

Every session ends with a written summary of what was said and what was asked for, published on this site.

Community Voices is non-partisan. We do not support or oppose any candidate or party. Every elected official at the relevant level is invited, or none is. Sessions are free or cost-recovery only, and are never held during an election campaign.

Our first sessions, beginning early 2027

When the work goes. What actually happens in the weeks between losing a job and losing housing.
The conversation we don't have. Mental health in communities where it is not discussed.

Sessions are free. Registration opens closer to each date.

Civic Access

Community awareness

Your vote is worth the same as everyone else’s. That is the whole idea, and it only works if you use it.

Municipal government decides the things you actually notice — when the bus comes, whether the rec centre stays open, where housing gets built, how long you wait for help. It is decided by the smallest number of voters of any election we hold. In most Ontario municipalities, fewer than four people in ten take part.

Civic Access exists to close two gaps.

The first is knowing that it matters. A lot of people have never been told that the council election is the one closest to their daily life, or that a few hundred votes routinely decide a ward.

The second is knowing how. Who can vote. What identification is accepted. Which ward you live in. Where and when to go, including advance polls. What help is available if you need an interpreter, a ride, or an accessible polling station.

We answer both. We take our information from the City Clerk and Elections Ontario and we put it in plain language, in the languages our community speaks.

We will tell you that your vote matters. We will tell you how to use it. We will never tell you who to use it on.

Fondation Mir Héritage is strictly non-partisan. We do not support or oppose any candidate or any political party. We do not endorse, we do not recommend, and no candidate is invited, named or pictured at a Civic Access session. Who you vote for is your business and we do not ask.

Sessions are free. Everyone is welcome.

Ask us about a session