Covenant House Vancouver

One of our original Rights of Passage (ROP) residents contacted us by email
6 years after his stay with us:

"I'm in Toronto, doing very well, finishing a double Honors at York University in English and Creative Writing. ROP had a significant impact on my life in that vulnerable time was I was 19 and into all sorts of trouble. Looking at your website now almost brought me to tears - strong memories, I guess."

After receiving an email like that, we got in touch with Mark and he agreed to be interviewed:

How did you find yourself at Covenant House?
(summarized from a telephone interview)

I moved out to Vancouver to get far away from Ontario - I had a bad highschool experience either dropping out or getting kicked out and I hated it. So I hitch-hiked out to Vancouver, stayed with a cousin for a while, then got a job at a supermarket but I was still living in a hostel and was floundering. I met someone who was applying to ROP and so I applied too.

What were your first impressions of ROP?

I felt like I would get a fresh start at ROP; it was very different, very strange from what I was used to. The other residents were great - unique in their own ways and I could relate to all of them in some way. There was a lot of caring and talk of community. I got my first adult hug at ROP from one of the other residents and I tell this story all the time: we had become friends and one day he just walked up and hugged me and I said "what are you doing?" and he said "giving you a hug". That blew me away.

How long did you stay at ROP?

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Click here to see our fall Good Samaritan Newsletter

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Hi everyone:

I just received a call from a grateful father in Ontario. We helped both of his sons when they were homeless and into drugs. If anyone remembers Kyle and Jason their father would like to say thank you very much. They are both doing well now. One is apprenticing to be a stone mason and the other is getting his ticket for carpentry. Both have been clean for over a year. He just wanted to let us know that there are people who appreciate the work we do. You guys rock!

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Tom had been living on the streets, on the beach and in adult shelters before he first came to Covenant House. He had fled the family home because of conflict with his parents. Tom managed to get odd jobs now and then but was unable to keep them. He was a daily pot smoker and because of this was discharged from our shelter several times as he would often come back "high".

Though staff couldn't put their finger on it, there was something about Tom that wasn't "quite right". During his 7th intake into the shelter, one of our youth workers, Tracy, noticed Tom staring at the desk. She asked Tom what he was looking at and he said it was a bug. Curious, Tracy started asking Tom more and more questions and it became apparent that he was experiencing both visual and auditory hallucinations. He had never told anyone before. A myriad of delusions plagued Tom every day and he was using marijuana to quiet down his mind.  

Once this piece of the puzzle was assembled, Tracy got Tom a psychiatric assessment which confirmed that he had schizophrenia (a mental illness that causes hallucinations, distortion of reality, paranoia and disorganized speech and thinking). Tracy was then able to trace back the beginnings of Tom's family conflict to age 15, when his symptoms first appeared (75% of those with schizophrenia become ill between 17 and 25).

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To those who think that leaving any form of prostitution legal is wise, moral or humane, we invite you to come to Covenant House.

To those who think that weakening the current anti-pimping laws in Rhode Island will accomplish anything but more human misery, we invite you to come to Covenant House.

Covenant House is the largest homeless shelter for trafficked and sexually exploited children and youth in the United States. We take care of more than 70,000 homeless youth each year across six countries and many of them have been muscled into the commercial sex trade during their adolescence, victimized by "johns" and pimps. Often, after law enforcement infiltrates a criminal sex ring, these are the youth left in the wake.

Each year thousands of homeless and runaway youth are swept up by human traffickers and subjected to vicious commercial sexual exploitation. They struggle in the shadows, away from the spotlight, out of the public eye, and without protection. So many of the victims are filled with such despair and self loathing, it takes years to rebuild their esteem and equip them to leave the past behind them. The chilling stories they recount sound a familiar refrain: as they struggled to survive on the margins of society, they found themselves alone, hidden from view, and cut off from any help.

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Today a young man of about 8 years old came to our front reception and proudly handed over a wonderful donation of $154.00 that he raised through a garage sale. For me nothing warms the heart quite like when a young person has taken the time to give back to our youth. It is so great to see not only the joy on their faces as they proudly know they are doing something to help out but also the look on parents faces as well. I can imagine how wonderful it would be to know you have helped to raise a compassionate and giving child. Huge thanks to all the kids and the parents out there that are doing so much to make the world a better place.

 

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Home For The Games is a web-based system that matches 2010 Olympic Games visitors with Metro Vancouver homeowners for short-term home stays. They help visitors find much-needed affordable accommodation. They create opportunities for homeowners, who are willing to share at least 50% of their rental income, to share an unforgettable Olympic experience with guests from around the world while earning modest income.

At the same time, they assure both groups that at least 50% of their rental fee will go directly to Covenant House Vancouver and Streetohome Foundation.

To learn more about this wonderful cause please visit: http://www.homeforthegames.com/

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Last night was my first experience doing outreach with Covenant House. I work in the Development and Communications department as a Donations Administrator so I don't really get to see all the front line stuff.

We started out by visiting a few of our youth at St.Paul's Hospital in the mental health ward. One young gentleman brought out his art portfolio that he has been working on, and proudly showed us his latest sketches. It was also a joy to see his face light up at the thought of displaying a few of his pieces in the art room at Pender. I got to sit with this young man and one of our outreach workers and witness the rapport between the two. The youth worker interacted extremely well with the youth and knew the exact questions to ask him and how to respond. The youth seemed very comfortable telling us about himself, his past, his illness and his plans for the future.

Next we went to visit a youth who recently left our shelter and is now living in an apartment and doing quite well. He was very happy to see us and told us all about his day and about the support groups he was attending. It was great to hear him say such nice things about Covenant House and about how much we helped him when he was staying in our shelter. He even has a picture of the Covenant House sign on his front door so that every time he leaves his home he thinks of us and all the things we did to help him.

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I have attached an article on disordered eating for everyone. In some way, shape or form regardless of what department you work in, we are all affected by disordered eating here at Covenant House. For the last year this has been a fairly hot topic so when I read this article I thought many of you might appreciate it.

Often the focus is on how little or how much a person is eating. Therapeutically this is not where the focus lies and it sometimes is confusing when quantity is not the primary focus for a client who has disordered eating. This article defines all the various eating disorders, the concerns and causes and it explains the process of healing.

I encourage you all to have a read and if you have any questions or feedback please feel free to leave a comment.

Cheers,

Tracy

 

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Imagine you are a young person struggling to get off the streets. You take the right steps by getting help for your addictions, get counselling and learn job and life skills. You are staying in a shelter or maybe on a friend's couch, and you have been working hard to find a job and you do!

Your job pays minimum wage but you are just happy to be off the streets, working and starting over. Now imagine your weekly pay is $320.00 before taxes, your monthly pay is about $1280.00 before taxes. Now imagine trying to live off of that amount of money...think of rent, food and transportation. Even if you have a roommate and live in a cheaper place (pretty hard to find in Vancouver) you are probably spending around $450-$500 on rent, bus pass at least $100, food and basic necessities $200 and other bills at least $100.00.

So just to live you probably need at least a $1000.00 a month and that is bare bones.

That is what so many of your youth face every day. BC has so many young people and families that are the working poor. People working full time jobs but just barely getting by and hardly ever getting ahead. Having the lowest minimum wage in Canada is unacceptable - we live in one of the most high cost areas and our minimum wage has not gone up for years even though the cost of living continues to increase. This greatly affects all of us - please make a stand for a higher minimum wage to benefit all of us in BC.

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