A proud daddy

Bryn MacDonald, a proud father, went from making $1,000 a day to an average of $1,000 a month, but he couldn’t be happier. When his daughter was born, he made the choice to work for himself as a graphic and website designer over working for a large corporation overseas. He explains, “She is my first child and I want to be the best parent I can be for her. I want to see her grow up and have stability.” He saw how important family values were in Asia and wanted to give his daughter the same caring and supportive environment to thrive in.

A happy little girl

Since 2009, he has been spending his days working at home, while spending quality time with his daughter.  When he needs a break, he brings his daughter to Bissell Centre’s Child Care centre. He drops her off twice a week at the day care so that he can have some time to relax and take naps.  He is also taking the parenting courses offered by Bissell so that he can learn to be a better parent. 

Bryn lives in the area, but it is not the only reason he enjoys coming to Bissell.  “The staff are so nice. They really do care about the children. It is obvious by how they treat the children,” he tells me.  And over the years, he has become good friends with some of the staff. They are so supportive and caring and are great role models for his daughter.

It is obvious that he is happy with where he is at right now. He doesn’t care about the money he could have made overseas. He is making ends meet, but he has a close relationship with his daughter and that is priceless.

Written by Guest Blogger Karen Lee.

Q & A with Mandy, Community Closet Worker

So what do you do at Bissell?
I work in the Community Closet. I do paperwork, sort donations and organize the closet to keep it tidy.

What is the Community Closet?
The Community Closet, located in the basement of Bissell Centre, is a program where low income/no income clients can receive free clothes and household items on a referral basis. We work with 22 other agencies across the city, i.e the John Howard Society, women shelters, H.I.V Edmonton and more. Once a client gets referred, they get a voucher to use at the Community Closet. They will have up to 2 weeks to fill it. This service can be accessed once every three months.  It is open Monday to Friday from 12:30-4:30pm. Clients can drop by anytime with their vouchers.

How many years have you been with Bissell?
I’ve been here for 11 years, ever since the Community Closet program started.

What do you like most about working here?
It is rewarding and I get to help people. It is as simple as that.

How many clients do you see on a daily basis?
It varies, but we average about 28 clients a day.

Where can people drop off their donations?
You can drop off your clothes and other household items at the Bissell Thrift Shoppe on 8818 118 Avenue or our South Side Donation Centre at 5120 – 122 Street or you can drop them off directly at Bissell Centre (10527 96 Street), if you prefer. We are always short on Men’s clothes. So if you have any, please drop them off!

Marilyn, a new Community Closet client

Marilyn is one of the many clients who access the Community Closet at Bissell. She is waiting outside the doors patiently with her voucher in her hands. She came here today looking for a change of clothes. It is her first time here. She has been on the streets for some time now in the same clothes and only came here because some people on the street told her about his place. Marilyn didn’t ever think she would be in her current situation.  She always had her own place. She didn’t have to worry about where she would be sleeping each night. Now due to some unfortunate circumstances, she is homeless. Tonight, she will be staying in a shelter. Her future is uncertain. The only thing that she is certain about is that she will get some clean clothes to wear from Bissell Centre’s Community Closet.

To find out more about this program, please contact the Community Closet at 780-423-2285, ext. 118 or view the Community Closet webpage.

Story written by Guest Blogger Karen Lee.

This year I became a member of the board for Edmonton’s Annual Homeless Memorial. I had been to the event in the past and have worked with Edmonton’s homeless population for the last five years as a staff member at Bissell Centre and Youth Emergency Shelter (now called Youth Empowerment and Support Services). I desired to be a member of the board to pay my respects to those I had known that had past this past year, to meet fellow advocates for homeless rights, and be involved in a meaningful undertaking.

The Edmonton Coalition on Housing and Homelessness funded this event that was chaired by John Acheson and Marian Enow (of the Edmonton Public Library) and also had members from Boyle Street Community Services, George Spady, Mustard Seed, Hope Mission and others. The memorial was held May 11th and for the first time the memorial took place outside so that it could culminate around the newly erected homeless memorial statue and also to simulate the lives of our fallen brothers and sisters whom had to spend much of the last number of years braving the elements.

Music was provided in the form of a ceremonial Aboriginal drummer and a Scottish bagpiper and also featured poignant speeches from Gary Moostoos (of Boyle Street Community Services) and John Acheson.  Approximately 200 people came to mourn the approximate 43 individuals who passed away this year. The event itself ran smoothly and was a success.  It was covered by local media and will hopefully bring more awareness to the life threatening danger that our cities homeless face on the streets in one of Canada`s coldest, most dangerous, and conservative cities. 

To watch a video of the memorial click here.

James, a regular in Bissell Centre’s Drop-In, tells me that he is grateful for places like Bissell.  For the past three months, he has been homeless.  At night he sleeps in shelters, but he doesn’t like it.  He has multiple health problems, including epilepsy and is prone to seizures, for which he needs to take medication, but he isn’t allowed to take them in the shelters.  In addition to having three major seizures in the last year, James is also diabetic and has high blood pressure.  And if you can believe it, he has problems with his eyesight also… he has double vision.

James is scared and emotionally distraught.  He doesn’t feel safe in the inner city. He has seen numerous acts of violence and an act of suicide on the streets.  He feels he has no support outside of Bissell.  He lost contact with his friends and family and feels alone and hopeless.  

James, like many homeless people, has been coming to Bissell daily for meals and a warm safe place to stay during the day.  Today he feels especially thankful – he is able to get his laundry done and was given a change of clothes and can finally get out of the ones he’s been walking around in for the last few weeks.

As my conversation with him comes to an end, he has tears in his eyes and starts weeping.  I tell him that his days ahead will get better.  And I really do hope that’s the case.

Bissell Centre is exploring other social enterprise opportunities and options – from small scale social businesses to rather large ones, and I will be reporting on all of our social enterprise activity over the next 12 months.

At this point I want to share with our visitors an excellent Introduction to Social Enterprising that was researched and written by our 2011 board intern, Uno Okon, who came to us from the University of Alberta Non Profit Board Development Program.

The report identifies various definitions of terms that are helpful, the why’s of social enterprise, implications to non profits, as well as provides some case studies. Please feel free to down load it and share it with others.

Click Here: Social Enterprise Report

Click Cover to Download

The group met periodically from 2005-2010 to share information about each of their activities and discuss different approaches to improve food security. In 2006, for example, the group released a paper Living without Food, which was published by the Bissell Centre.

In 2007, several T5H network members attended a workshop on “social analysis systems” (SAS2), a set of methods designed to assist collaborative approaches to complex social issues.  After the workshop, Peter Faid, from Community Services Consulting Ltd, facilitated a number of conversations to explore how SAS2 might be used by to explore how to improve access to nutritious food for vulnerable residents in the inner city.

The ebb and flow of the leadership of the T5H network meant that the idea for the project was put on hold. In late 2010, Bissell Center secured resources from Family and Community Support Services program of the City of Edmonton to support the inquiry.  Jane Hirst, then interim Executive Director of Bissell Center, asked Mark Cabaj, with the support of Peter Faid and Jim Klingle, to facilitate an SAS2 guided inquiry entitled Better Access to Better Food in the T5H neighborhoods. 

The project has continued, with numerous meetings and considerable research undertaken. At this writing the City of Edmonton funded project has come to an end and the work and findings to date are represented in a “Final Report.” There are quotes around “final report” because we are continuing on without funding in place. Mark Cabaj has agreed to provide some volunteer facilitation and Peter Faid and Jim Klingle will lend a hand no doubt when asked! Bissell Centre has agreed to serve as project administrator. Part of that work includes creating and managing a wiki site (located here) at which all the proceedings are documented and which can be used to solicit more involvement from area organizations and groups.

I encourage you to take a look at the report and share it with others. If you want to join us in work, you can send your interest to me personally at mholmgren@bissellcentre.org

260 of Bissell Centre’s closest supporters, sponsors, staff and volunteers shared this experience on May 5 at Sutton Place Hotel.  In addition to media and special guests in attendance, we were honoured by the presence of the Lieutenant Governor, His Honour, Col. (Ret’d) The Honourable Donald S. Ethell.  We would also like to thank Eileen Bell of 630 CHED for emceeing the event, as well as Mark Scholz for acting as our auctioneer.

Bissellebration is not just about celebrating.  It is also about ensuring that we have the funding and assistance to continue and expand the services that we provide to people in need.

I am pleased to share that funds raised through the event totaled over $80,000, including $20,000 for children. 

Bissell Centre would like to thank this year’s sponsors:

• Servus Credit Union
• WorleyParsons
• PCL Construction
• Boardwalk Rental Communities
• Capital Power

Thank you to everyone who attended and made Bissellebration 2012 such a successful endeavour.  We invite you to join us next year for Bissellebration 2013!

Shall we just talk about decreasing the incidence of poverty, set goals to lower the number of people living in poverty by 10%, 20% or some other “doable” but arbitrary number? Would we celebrate success knowing such goals, in effect, suggest we are concerned with a minority of those who are poor?  Would we really be satisfied if our efforts only helped one in ten?

Click Cover to Download

Bissell Centre’s decision to adopt this vision in 2011 is about a call to action for our organization to lead and act in ways that engage governments, businesses, labor, funders, associations, other non-profits, and individuals from all walks of life to come together to create and sustain the range and depth of change required to help people avoid or rise up out of poverty.

Our vision is also a call to change our own organization, where required, to ensure everything we do is vision-focused, whether in the direct delivery of our various programs, the partnerships we undertake across sectors, our relationships with funders and donors, or how we behave in community. 

Our vision is a calling to focus our attention not only on traditional human service programs but also on actions that promote social justice, advocate for basic human rights, and enlist others to join together to build a stronger, more connected community. A community that is economically and socially viable for all citizens; a community that takes responsibility for each hungry child, each homeless person, each victim of abuse and violence; a community that is not willing to accept poverty and homelessness as tolerable or defensible.

Bissell Centre is not alone in this vision.  Our intent is aligned with the social justice emphasis of our United Church founders (not to mention the faith community in general), with governments’ plans and actions to eliminate homelessness, with the changing emphasis of funders like United Way, with the corporate social responsibility strategies of businesses, and with the hundreds of donors who look to us for leadership in making life better for the poor and disenfranchised. We see other non-profit organizations sharing in this vision, too, many of whom we already partner with, and even more that we need to reach out to and explore new and better ways of working together.

There will be no chance of achieving our vision and little chance of making significant progress if our community continues to work in disparate and fragmented ways. Our mission stresses “working with others.”

We will see more failures than successes if our strategies attempt to lay blame and ostracize others for the problems in our communities.  The case to change a social policy, a program or service, or how an organization is structured or funded does not need to be discussed or enacted within a context of culpability for what’s not working, but rather should be addressed around an alignment of common intent and goodwill.

THE CALL TO ACTION
At Bissell Centre, we believe in the power of caring. We believe that individuals can make a difference in their own lives and in our community. To achieve our vision, it must become the vision of many and that is at the heart of the work ahead: to partner with others to build, nurture, and sustain a movement to end poverty and homelessness in our community.

The vision to eliminate poverty necessarily means Bissell Centre will have to undertake numerous roles in our community – leader, participant, advocate, partner, mentor, learner, innovator, and risk taker.  It also means that such an ambitious vision demands an equally ambitious, super ordinate strategy, which is this: to be a leader in the development of a community-wide movement to eliminate poverty and homelessness.

Such a strategy is not only about achieving BIG CHANGE in our community, it also calls our own organization to undergo significant change in how we see and live our role in community. While we continue to provide a range and depth of services to those most vulnerable in our community, we must become a catalyst for community synergy and action to overcome poverty and homelessness.

Please take a bit of time to view our strategic intent over the next five years. If you have any questions, ask us. If you want to help, join us. There is a whole lot to do.

Meet Paul – a 52 year old man I met at Bissell Centre’s Drop-In.  Once upon a time Paul was financially comfortable.  He worked for nine years as a journeyman tinsmith making $34 an hour.  He had a place to live and didn’t have to worry about the next meal.  But all that changed when he got into an unfortunate accident at work in 2008, which left him with severely injured hands and an amputated finger.  After six major reconstructive surgeries over the past three years Paul still doesn’t have full usage of his hands, and today he is one of the many homeless people living in the inner city.

Paul blames the Worker’s Compensation Board (WCB) for his current situation.  Paul is currently receiving $648 a month from them for his accident, which he says will run out in July.  Understandably, he is angry and frustrated.  Paul has been working all of his life but now he isn’t able to afford a place to live.  For about a year Paul has been living on the streets and using inner city organizations like Bissell Centre to just get by on a daily basis.  At Bissell he relies on the Casual Labour Program to make some extra money.

Up until recently Paul was receiving $1,856 per month for the past three years until WCB told him he is ready to return to work.  According to Paul, he is unable to return to work as a tinsmith because he lost the dexterity he once had in his hands.  He estimates that he can only do a third of the work he once did.  He was also diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) about a year and half ago.

Paul is uncertain about his future.  He doesn’t know if he can recover from his PTSD.  Finding work has been difficult for him, he even tried training for other types of work through Bissell’s Employment Program, but his PTSD makes it challenging for him to remember the skills and information taught to him.

As my meeting with him concludes, I wonder how Paul’s story will end.  He told me he will continue to fight the WCB’s decision to cease his compensation.  I hope it works out for him.  Until then, he will continue his daily visits to Bissell to eat, do laundry, make phone calls, for emotional support and other necessities.

Find out more about Employment Services.

Here’s what you can do.

This annual food and culture fair is the brainchild of Wes Wintonyk and his Grade 9 Leadership Class.  Designed to celebrate the diversity of the local community, each student is responsible for two food stations representing nations spanning the entire globe – from India to Germany, Korea, and even the North Pole!  This is yet to speak of live entertainment including Scottish bagpipes and Caribbean steel drums.

As part of Riverbend Junior High’s multi-year commitment to Bissell, all funds raised through the event on April 20 go to support our work in the community.  Brisk ticket sales and generous food donations from local businesses mean that this vibrant, creative event will also provide us with financial resources that are always needed.  The students make a genuine difference in the community.

On behalf of everyone at Bissell Centre, I would like to thank all of the parents, volunteers, business owners, teachers and students who made A Taste of Riverbend so successful.