Homelessness Action Week

Battered Women's Support Services Association

Homelessness prevention, intervention, advocacy, and support workshops

The proposed project includes a twelve session workshop series aimed at providing information, advocacy, and support for self-identified women in need of ongoing, safe, and secure housing who are currently experiencing homelessness, have experienced homelessness, or are at risk of homelessness.

Ten of the workshops will be provided for women who are in need of housing and the two remaining workshops will be hosted for frontline workers and housing service providers.

The overall purpose of this project is to provide information regarding available local housing resources, and subsidies, and to connect women to other community-based organizations that offer various housing supports. 

This project will also include supporting women in completing and submitting housing applications, advocating with current housing providers if needed, providing gift certificates for healthy meals to all those attending the workshops, as well as strategizing payments for moving expenses and the first month's rent.

Connect Vancouver

Connect Vancouver - summer initiative

The project would provide four months of pre-paid cell phone bills and smartphones to each client, as well as the option of digital literacy training. Smartphones used for the program would be sourced from our donation program. Grant funding would be primarily utilized towards phone bills, and phone accessories such as charging cables, which are our primary cost when preparing donated smartphones for use in our programs.

Vancouver DUDES Squad

This project proposes to create a new DUDES Street Squad (DSS) in the Strathcona and Grandview-Woodland neighbourhoods in Vancouver based out of our new office on Clark Street to meet the greatly increased needs of the communities following the homelessness, COVID-19, and overdose epidemics.

This project would support a group of four peers, one peer facilitator, and one elder or knowledge keeper to conduct weekly street-based outreach services to individuals experiencing homelessness, housing insecurity, or substance use.

Employ to Empower Foundation

The Human-First Project

The “Human-First Project,” will address the stigma and discrimination of people who are experiencing (or have experienced) poverty and homelessness in the DTES community by facilitating education / awareness, dialogue, interaction and connection between these groups through a series of podcasts, documentaries, educational workshops, and events.

The project’s purpose is to celebrate the individuality of members of the DTES community, spark community dialogue, and facilitate opportunities for meaningful contact (for example: engagement opportunities) between people experiencing or who have experienced homelessness and other stigmatized conditions in the DTES, and broader population of Vancouverites who may have limited experiences and awareness of these issues.

Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House

Hastings-Sunrise Heat Wave: Youth Project

The Hastings-Sunrise Heat Wave: Youth Project aims to provide vulnerable people in our community with information about the risks of heat waves as well as distribute items essential to staying safe and cool during extreme heat.

We will be partnering with the Hastings Branch of the Vancouver Public Library which will be acting as a cooling centre during the summer months. We will be using VPL Hastings as the safe location for our group to distribute items.

Gallery Gachet

15th Annual Oppenheimer Park Community Art Show

The annual Oppenheimer Park Community Art Show features artists who have a connection to Oppenheimer Park, its surrounding neighbourhood, and the Downtown Eastside. The first Oppenheimer Park show was held in 2008 in anticipation of changes, challenges, and loss in a pre-Olympic city. Since then, artists in the show have addressed international politics, placement and displacement, history, nature, and time, among many other themes.

Gachet’s mandate is to center artists who have lived experience with mental illness, trauma, and substance use, and the Oppenheimer Park show provides us an opportunity to work with artists who face barriers in navigating traditional juried open call procedures with galleries.

Empowering Community Care: sensory care kits + connecting through story   

This project will 1) assemble and redistribute resources that offer forms of sensory respite that are not dependent on where you find shelter, empowering community care of self and of others, through gifted "Sensory Respite Kits" which we have been developing in our practice alongside community in the DTES; 2) connect neighbours with disparate experiences of housing, through story and creativity, to dismantle stigma and build connection. In both cases, through direct involvement of those with lived and living experience, we will directly "help Vancouver residents who are homeless."

LLCS Winter Charity Drive Care for the Homeless

The project is to distribute winter care package with non-perishable foods, socks, ponchos, gloves and scarves to city temporary shelter homeless residents, and to street homeless who need help by Lotus Light's community partner organizations Vancouver Police Department Homeless Outreach program, BC Ambulance Service paramedics, Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction outreach team, and by Lotus Light's Extreme Weather Response Team during Extreme Cold Weather Alerts.

The primary population groups includes people experiencing homelessness, people who were recently experiencing homelessness, and people at risk of homelessness in the DTES community.

The program deliver a positive message to the vulnerable groups in our community that the society cares for their welfare.

Marpole's Safe Haven

The purpose of this grant, is to provide opportunities for the community to come together in dialogue through sessions provided by trained community professionals and neighbours with lived experience. The overall goal is to create a safe haven for the community to come together and in collaboration, begin to remove the fear and stigma associated with homelessness.

In a spirit of belonging and safety, these facilitated dialogues/workshops will provide opportunities to learn and discuss Marpole’s homelessness issues and together find solutions to hold space for our most vulnerable community members. Creating a safe haven for both individuals who are experiencing homelessness and for the community at large to have open dialogue and spaces for learning will increase understanding of and create a way forward for this complex issue.

Hot soup kitchen

This year's project is going to work with local service providers such as churches, Salvation Army, Neighbourhood houses, community members, VPL to create a Food Security Mapping of community meals in the Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood. We were successful in doing a 7 days a week hot soup program during the winter months for last year's grant. As this year's grant is less than what is needed to sustain a 7 day a week program, we want to partner with other organizations and compliment each others community meals to ensure that our homeless have meals available each day. 

The project/event is going to identify gaps in food security services and choose a location and help them develop a soup program, using our model and so they can offer the same program on a day and at time needed. 

Community Dialogue on Homelessness Awareness & Support

The project consists of two dialogue sessions focusing on breaking down stigma and stereotypes surrounding unhoused individuals. The dialogue sessions will lead into a call for donation in-kind. The donations will be delivered to a shelter after a walk in solidarity with homelessness. The project is open to all members of the community, but we are hoping to get youth and young adults more involved. The main purpose of the project will be to raise awareness and share stories about homelessness, displacement, and breaking down stereotypes associated with poverty, mental health and homelessness. 

Understanding Homelessness 

The 'Understanding Homelessness' project has 2-parts:

Resources Guide Booklet: and "Understanding Homelessness" Open-House Community/Resources Fare held at Killarney Community Centre with:

• Indigenous Elder will open the gathering with drumming, songs, blessings, and land acknowledgement.
• HAW Facilitator will help the community members understand what 'visible and invisible homelessness' means and how the community can support those experiencing it.
• SVNH will share a presentation of the statistics, stories, and experiences of those in the streets of South Van. (The presentation is in the process of being completed by the Resources Navigator)
• Participants will be encouraged and invited to share their stories and will have an opportunity to get to know the resources that are available as they visit the Resources Tables set up by Hub partners during this gathering.

Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre Society

VAFCS's Medicine Wheel Wellness Day  

VAFCS’s proposed project is a community wellness day that will be held in the VAFCS gym where clients from our 201 Central shelter and 1607 E Hastings shelter, along with any ongoing clients of the friendship centre can eat a warm meal, receive personal hygiene care (haircuts and foot care), be offered opportunities in VAFCS’s skills and employment programs (as well as outside skills and employment programs.)

The wellness day will also boast a mini-tax clinic, a booth to help people with resume’s, housing supports, cultural supports and medicines as well as a drumming circle and a time set aside for peers with lived experience to share their story or artwork (poetry, spoken word).

VAFCS would also like to host organizations like Working Gear, ACCESS and Indigenous Innovations to name a few.

Warming centre outreach

We have operated in partnership with the City of Vancouver a warming centre in our Odd Fellows hall for the past two winters. The City only has basic funding that pays for staffing and security. We offer our hall for free to the City. We have seen over the past two years how much more support the homeless need and we would like to expand our services to reach out to the homeless in our neighbourhood and provide them with support services.

In addition to providing the homeless with shelter during the winter we would like to look at providing evening meals, coupons for breakfast, bus passes, clean socks, care packages, blankets, sleeping bags - both at our centre when it is open but also canvassing the neighbourhood on other nights over the year. For example, our volunteers this winter walked through the neighbourhood on a cold night and came across a man who was dying of heart failure and we brought him some food and helped him get to hospital.

Free men's clothing pop-up event

Many of the more established clothing programs in the DTES tend to focus on women’s clothing and while this great, the population of the DTES has a higher percentage of individuals identifying as men. The lack of men's clothing coupled with the demand for men's clothing has created a shortage of men’s clothing in the DTES.

This has resulted in a need for men’s clothing pop-ups to service the DTES community. Working Gear has had two so far in 2022. The pop-up event is a free clothing store where most of the clothing and footwear is men. All genders are welcome to attend and take items. We are currently using space at a local charity partner, but this location is small and not accessible for those in wheelchairs. We would like to secure and rent space in a more open at inclusive space funding would ensure this is possible.

We would like to host monthly free clothing pop-ups for the rest of 2022 to bridge the need of footwear and suitable men's clothing for marginalized individuals in the community. This shares much needed quality items like men's clothing and footwear to those experiencing homelessness or at risk of experiencing homelessness. Paid peer labour for the pop-up clothing event will also create meaningful experiences both for peers and for the attendees of the events but also take the pressure off Working Gear’s finite volunteer capacity which will ensure our main programs maintain sustainability.