Covenant House Vancouver

Each month our crisis shelter manager appears on CKNW's The Christy Clark Show to discuss parenting teenagers.  Many different topics are covered and we can't get to all the questions from callers, so we welcome your questions and will do our best to answer them quickly.  To submit a question go to Ask Covenant House. We will pick the most popular questions/themes and the answers will be posted on the blog.

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I am going to post a page from a young person's most amazing comic each week for 8 weeks so you are going to have to check back to see what happens. 

Please bear with me and the size - technical difficulties!  Thanks.

 

 

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A few weeks ago, Aaron Hutchinson came down to Covenant House with an idea. He told me about how he felt when he saw a young person on the street asking for money. The thought of young Vancouverites in such troubled situations moved Aaron into action and he started thinking about what he could do to help them on a larger scale.

He toured our Drake & Seymour Street location and asked a lot of questions about our programs and services for young people up to 25 years of age. Aaron wanted to try to help them make positive changes in their lives and saw Covenant House as an organization that could help make that happen. And so, Aaron embarked on his ‘Change for Change' initiative.

He has involved 18 restaurants in the downtown core, dozens of friends, and Juno nominated band Marianas Trench. The goal: collect as much spare change as they possibly can (the group is aiming for 6000 pounds of the stuff!), and put it all together to make a larger impact.  Click here to see the Marianas Trench video promoting this fundraiser.

The ‘Change for Change' buckets around the city are filling up quickly and on February 7 the fundraiser will conclude with a weigh in party at Ginger 62 where all proceeds will go to Covenant House Vancouver. 

Thanks Aaron for all of your hard work!

Below is a list of participating restaurants:

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Yesterday, our youth versus staff floor hockey game was held at the Roundhouse in front of a crowd evenly split in its allegiance. Won by staff 13-12 in a shoot out, the game brought out many youth from our shelter and ROP programs both as participants and spectators.

As I was watching the game, I was thinking how amazing it was to see the youth simply having "fun". I was thinking about from where these youth have come and how so many of them haven't had the opportunity for a lot of fun in their lives, and I got teary. I felt proud that we were providing this chance for fun and fellowship.

Plus it was really FUN for me to see our staff run their butts off, dripping in sweat, feeling their "age" compared to the youth who didn't seem phased in the least.

Our young people also take yoga classes on Friday thanks to the folks at Flow Yoga (part of the YYOGA chain, who also just generously donated $2500 from their Karma yoga classes in November and December). Thank you YYOGA!

Those of us who exercise regularly know how good we feel during and after we break a good sweat and it was awesome to see our youth feeling good and having fun - they so deserve it.

Here's Matt, one of our CSS/Outreach workers after his first period as goalie

 Staff cheering after their narrow victory

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