Apart from groups like the Salvation Army, the Olive Tree and the Men’s Shelter, there’s a growing non-profit volunteer network that has boots on the ground, reaching out to unhoused community members.
Recently, two of those groups combined efforts to hand out food, harm reduction and hygiene supplies and have conversation with people who live on the streets.
The Street Team run by Lloydminster and Vermilion for Equity and Tawaw are both hitting the pavement a couple times each week, trekking from Residents In Recovery, downtown to the East Side Sev or East Side 7-Eleven.
Tigra-Lee Campbell with the Street Team says they operate earlier in the evening and Tawaw does later hours, but it was great to team up to offer support to those on the streets.
Campbell reflects when they started a few summers ago, it was just a two-person outreach with colleague Brad Gallamore, and a cooler on wheels but now they provide sandwiches and snacks.
“It’s definitely grown a lot. We have now incorporated the harm reduction piece of it, which is substance-use equipment. We can’t change behaviours, but we can help people be safe,” says Campbell.
She adds they have just started operating on Tuesday, and the teams are on the streets on Thursday and Sunday. They also have one family that has committed to providing meals on the last Sunday of every month.
The group also supports families that may have a roof over their heads, but are making ends meet on a single income or living on social assistance. Campbell says someone messages their group and she gets to work on offering support to folks like single moms.
“It’s food insecurity – that’s what we are addressing and poverty. Poverty is not always people that are not housed and living on the streets, poverty can be people that are housed, but they are having to make decisions about whether they are going to pay their rent, pay their bills or feed themselves and their children.”
She adds the support helps that family get to their next pay day or hamper day from the local food bank.
One strategy she thinks could be helpful is to have another community garden like the one at Bud Miller Park, which is good, but she says is limited by the lack of public transit to make it more accessible to those who don’t have a car.
Another issue she notes is that both the Olive Tree and the Salvation Army are seeing increased demand for their services, and in the case of the latter, they have pushed back delivery of food hampers from four to six weeks. That development occurred in January and the Salvation Army continues to interview about five new families every week.
Contact details for both the LVE Street Team and Tawaw may be found on their respective Facebook pages.