Covenant House Vancouver

I had a great experience recently that reminded me why I came to work for Covenant House almost 10 years ago.

I am a Senior Development Officer here at Covenant House and in my role I spend a lot of time explaining in detail how important our programs are. I use numbers, graphs, percentages and tours through both of our buildings so our donors can fully understand how important their donations are to our young peoples' success.

I had a meeting and tour planned with a prospective donor who was considering recommending Covenant House for a very significant gift. We had set the meeting after a phone conversation and they were interested but they wanted to meet prior to any commitments. The day of the meeting, I went downstairs to meet my guests at the front desk, but when I arrived they were talking with one of our young people. When the conversation finished, I introduced myself and my guest said, "No need for the tour or the meeting; we're sold."

We did go upstairs to talk and it turns out that while they were waiting in our lobby a young man asked them if they were donors and they answered, "yes we are." Our young person then said "Thank you, because this place saved my life". A short conversation had continued from there with the young man explaining his trip from back east and the difficulties he has overcome and how thankful he was that Covenant House was here.

This short and honest exchange had a profound impact. It proved to our donors that their support is appreciated. It allowed this young person the opportunity to say thank you for all that they have received, thanks to people they don't usually meet.

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Congratulations to Nicole whose stark and eloquent comic appeared on our blog a few months ago, for her recent winning of Ve'ahavta's 9th annual Creative Writing Contest.  Out of 750 submissions, Nicole placed 4th which is an amazing accomplishment.

The submissions were judged by a list of writers and media personalities. In 2010, the judges included humanitarian and actress Mia Farrow, Steve Paikin of TVO, Wendy Mesley of CBC, and producer and television host George Tsioutsioulas. The winners receive various prizes, including a creative writing course at The University of Toronto and The University of British Columbia, along with the top cash prize donated by Kernel's Popcorn for $1500.

Below is Nicole's winning submission:

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Lots of different people contribute to our blog including youth workers, donors, youth and staff.  As people allow, I am going to start posting photos of our bloggers and I'm starting with me :) and Kristy as we do a lot of the writing...so here we are:

Michelle

Kristy

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Confirmation students at Canadian Martyrs Catholic Church in Richmond decided to put their "money where their mouth was" in a unique fundraising project for Covenant House. Over one weekend, the students aged 12 - 14, raised $1200 to be used towards our matching June mailing, along with funds donated by an anonymous supporter who has pledged to match all donations to a maximum of $25,000.

According to the Church's pastor, Rev Paul Chu, the students called this fundraiser Project Snackrifice in keeping with the Lenten observance of abstinence and sacrifice. At each weekend service, the students made an appeal to the parish community to abstain from snacks during lent and donate the money they would have spent to Covenant House. After each service, students sold pictures of four snack items - chips, candy, ice cream and pop - for a donation of $1 each.

The response from the community was overwhelming according to Rev Chu mainly because "the appeal to help youth came from our youth. The benefit to our children was priceless. They didn't know the power of their appeal!"

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One of our chefs, Jenn, always plants seasonal flowers in the box in front of our building.  It speaks to the efforts our staff go to make Covenant House a warm and welcoming place.  David, who works the dayshift at the front desk of our Drake Street building, is the first face our youth see when they come in for help.  David and all of the other front desk workers are friendly, know all the youth's names and keep them engaged while they are waiting to see a youth worker. 

Don't these two photos just say "come on in, you're welcome here"?

Flowers planted by Jenn 

 David

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Yesterday I heard a presentation from Moe, our Manager of Case Management (the one who oversees all of the plans of care our youth workers put into place for our young people) and I was very inspired yet again to hear about what we do to ensure that our young people are receiving individualized and comprehensive care.

The young people we serve come to us with several barriers to independence and their plans have to take into account many often complicated factors. Such was the case with Tuck, a young man who was with us a few years ago - his story illustrates the complex needs our youth have and their often profound desire to be loved, nurtured and encouraged.  This story was written by a past youth worker, Andrew, who worked in all three of our core programs over many years.

Tuck was a 19 year old who was born into a family that had brothers and sisters from two different marriages. His home life was not like the one you may have experienced. His father was/is affiliated with organized crime. As you can imagine, this would be a difficult place for any young person to grow up in. Tuck shared with me on different occasions some of the illegal activity that he had to take part in due to who he was and who he was connected to. The lifestyle involves drinking and drugs on a regular basis and he became addicted to Crystal Meth in his early teens.

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One day at a time, that's what they say,
Living in yesterday won't give you what you want.
I remember how I used to wish the pain away,
But now I'm re-writing my life in a different font.

I used to sit alone in my room fiending,
Trying to cover up those depressed feelings.
Now I'd rather hang out in an AA meeting,
And finally for the first time I feel like I'm healing.

It feels really good just to be me,
And not living in total fear,
It's like I was blind and now I can see,
And everything is crystal clear.

Now I can't wait for the years to come,
Without worrying how to stay numb.

 

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I am beyond excited about today! Through our life skills program, several of our youth having been attending weekly yoga classes at YYOGA (thank you so much YYOGA). I have been dying to talk to the youth to see how they are enjoying yoga but obviously I can't go and "observe" a class. As one who regularly practices, it occurred to me that I should just go with them to a class and chat to them about it afterwards. So today at 2:30 I am power class bound with staff member Tania and a some youth yogis.  Next week I will have an article about the yoga practice and hopefully some pictures.

If you want to learn more about how yoga enriches the lives of street youth, you must check out this video about Street Yoga, an amazing organization in Portland that provides free yoga so homeless and at-risk youth.

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During outreach we were handing out sandwiches we ran into a kid on the street that we didn't know and he said that he had just got out of the hospital. He had his little patient bag with his belongings and a blanket wrapped around him. He didn't know who we were so we introduced ourselves and told him about what we could help him out with and what our services were and we offered him a sandwich.

The funny thing is he was listening to all our services but as soon as we pulled out the sandwiches his eyes just lit up and he was like "you're going to give me a sandwich?" and we said yeah and we have other things to offer too but all he could focus on was the sandwich and he ripped it open and he was shoving it in his face and smacking away and he was like "This is so great. "Oh my gosh I can't believe you gave me a sandwich". There were crumbs flying out of his mouth and everything.

It was just comical and really touching to see how something so small can make somebody's day a little brighter. Providing somebody with food is huge when they are starving. People are appreciative and those moments can make a difference in somebody's day and in somebody's life.

 

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Covenant House's Downtown Street Voice (DSV) exists to bring awareness and education to issues that street entrenched and at risk youth face.  DSV is a youth lead advocacy and activist group. This is Covenant House Vancouver's longest running youth group. Though it has taken many forms over the years, it has continued due to the hard work and dedication of a few youth, strong belief in youth engagement and great team work within Covenant House.

This group is mostly youth driven, but is staffed and funded by Covenant House. That means this groups runs as a democracy within itself as to its group guidelines, direction, allocation of the DSV budget, and membership agreements but all meetings are facilitated by a Life Skills Worker.

One of the services DSV offers is "The Real Game of Life" which they faciliate to groups who are interested in learning what it's really like to live on the streets.  Click here for more information.

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