Covenant House Vancouver

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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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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Andy had been coming to us on and off for about two years. The last time he came he had recently stopped using crystal meth and he looked better than we had ever seen him.

We did an intake and though he was off the meth, he appeared to be seriously mentally ill. He would talk for 20 minutes and you couldn't understand a word he said. But he was willing to "go through all the hoops" like waiting to see a psychiatrist and taking medication.

Andy decided that he needed to go to Miracle Valley Treatment (for his addictions). After three months he came back a much healthier Andy and we didn't see any of the mental health stuff going on. We came to the conclusion that it had been the crystal meth that was causing his psychosis (it is common for street youth to still display psychosis even six months after using crystal meth and some suffer permanent brain damage). Andy is one of the lucky ones as he has recovered from his crystal meth addiction and the resulting psychosis.

While at the shelter, Andy found a job and was accepted into ROP. When he left for ROP, Andy had the hugest smile on his face. He was so happy, so relieved. He was joking with us and was so excited about this new opportunity.

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i live'd in covey in vancouver b.c. n then moved into there rop program i lived there for 1n a hlf yrs its was a good experiance and gave me the tools i needed to achieve the level of sucess i have acheived today!!!! even though i was evetually dicharged from the program the skills i learned in the time there has greatly advanced my life to a positive forefront... i currently have achived my red seal as a chef i have my daughter for the summers and am expecting my 2 nd child with my new wife who i have been married to for 1 yr but known for 11 yrs.... witout the staff at rop vancouver (rob & eyvonne ecspially!!! love u guys) i do not think i would have acheived anywhere close to my current accomplishments or be alive for that matter i only hope that you can continue to help at risk youth who were as hopeless as i was

yours truly
Kevin (name changed to protect privacy of youth)

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Our young people tell us frequently about the dangers of living on the streets:  getting robbed while you're sleeping (sometimes even having shoes removed in the middle of the night) or getting assaulted is commonplace.  Street youth say it's difficult to focus on bigger health issues when you're just trying to find your next meal.  This Tyee article shines a light on the sheer danger of trying to survive on the streets.

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Covenant House Vancouver's blog is officially launched!

We hope that youth, donors, volunteers, staff and everyone who is interested in street youth and the issues of homelessness will subscribe to our feed and contribute to our blog.

We will be updating regularly so if you subscribe, you will be notified of new postings.

If you would like to submit something to the blog, please email: clausius@covenanthousebc.org or simply make a comment.

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I just received a phone call that I thought should be shared with everyone.

Just recently, we had two youths staying with us from Quebec one of whom could only speak French. After staying with us for awhile, Covenant House and Directions joined forces and repatriated them to Quebec. I just finished talking to one of their mothers (who is also strictly a francophone) and she just wanted to extend a grand merci to everyone.

Have a nice day everybody!

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Sam and his mother came in today with a wonderful gift.  He was adorable with a curly mop of hair and big eyes.  He handed me an envelope looking very proud, $32 in twoonies.

Sam just turned 5, his day was full of fun and he had a cake with cars on it….for his birthday party he asked all his guests to bring a twoonie to help the kids without a bed.

You see Sam has accompanied his mother to St Paul to do rounds in the early mornings and questioned why there were kids on the street without beds, why would there mom’s let them sleep there, aren’t they cold etc..

He asked him mom if they had money could they have a bed, what can we do….she they came up with the birthday party idea and first in mind was Covenant House.

I bent down to tell him how thankful we were and commended his kind heart…I asked if I could give him a hug and he said yes and I received a delightful squish and off they went.  As I turned away I felt the tears well up, what more can I say, amazing! 

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