To continue on with the theme of difficult to answer questions, another question I also quite often get asked is something to the effect of, “Dion, how are things going at the Gateway?” Yet again, as often as I get asked this question I never cease to be stumped by it. There truly is no easy, casual answer to that question.
On the one hand things are not going very well at all. We have a 108-bed shelter for adult men that is full every night. Every night of the year there are 108 men who have found themselves homeless for one reason or another and need to access one of our shelter beds. We have a society that doesn’t seem to have the political or communal will to ensure that the needs of all people are being taken care of. We have no national poverty reduction or housing strategy. We have 500,000 more people in this country that are unemployed this Labour Day then there were last year at this time. We are seeing more and more people who never dreamed they’d need to stay in a shelter losing their jobs, their dignity, their families, their homes and their hope, and then showing up here out of desperation to book a bed for the night. We are hearing stories of depression, violence, addiction, abuse, and neglect every day of the week from men in their 40’s that have essentially been declared as unemployable by our culture. We are meeting men from small towns and cities all across Canada from every province and territory that are slipping through the cracks of their so-called communities.
Things really aren’t going that well at the Gateway.
But on the other hand, things are going extremely well here. We have a very committed staff that keeps coming back to work every day for the right reasons. We are doing all that we can to redefine what a shelter has to look like. The people who come here are treated like human beings; not like clients, projects, problems or statistics. The people we work alongside are not ‘homeless men’; they are ‘men experiencing homelessness’. Homelessness does not define them.
At Gateway we are doing all that we can to blur the lines as to who is doing the caring and who is receiving the care. All of the people who come here, including staff, residents and volunteers, are in this thing called life together. We each have needs and gifts. We each can learn from each other how to become healthier people.
At Gateway we do not believe in giving ‘hand-outs’. Nor do we even believe in giving ‘hand-ups’ which seems to be the more politically correct way of describing social services these days. We are simply people who are holding out our hands and saying “Here’s my hand. It might be dirty. It likely has germs on it. It might be calloused. It’s just my hand. But I am offering it to you to grab on to so that we can walk through life together.”
I won’t go into all of our programs in this blog as it’s all outlined on our website. But if you haven’t already done so, check out our exciting new social purpose enterprise page called ‘Gateway Linens’. Then also take a glimpse at our ‘Street Outreach’ page as well. And if you’re interested in knowing if what we are doing is actually making an impact on people, check out our statistics report or our ‘Success Stories’ page.
Things really are going very well here at Gateway and I am thankful every day for the gift of being able to come here and be a part of it.
PS. I’m off to Montreal in the next hour to spend time with some very cool like-minded folks there. We truly can do more together than we can do as individuals. Tomorrow’s piece will be a little insight into what I’ve been doing on a national scale with groups like the good folks in Montreal regarding social justice and advocacy.
Shalom,
Dion