My LeadershipWR class had its first community learning day last week. The theme was poverty. I think many people in the class had a lot to learn and I think they did. I thought I knew things pretty well, but I gained from the experience too.

Paul picked me up at about quarter after seven. It had rained in the night and the wind blew water down off the leaves in the trees. Most of our day would be at the Cambridge Self-Help FoodBank so I had packed a non-perishable food item to donate. We got caught in traffic on the freeway, but made it into Galt okay and parked on Ainslie around the corner from the CSHFoodBank.

Near the beginning we had group discussion over our assignments. We were to use our “leadership lens” — a term that came from our retreat in September — to observe poverty in our community and express what we saw. It seems everyone had taken notes and written their thoughts down. I had made a drawing and written a poem and was the only one, at least in my group, to do so.

It was interesting to hear some of the perspectives from people. To me the class isn’t entirely representative of our community. I feel that we are mostly very well off socio-economically, pretty bourgeois, and mostly white. One of the learning outcomes for the day was to understand that “poverty is circumstantial.”

I resist that notion. I understand that the vagaries of chance can create different challenges for different people. We live our lives in circumstance, but still have an island of influence. While believing that people have no challenges that require more than their own power, is turning you back on civilization; thinking that people’s current lots have no aspect of personal choice isn’t the basis for solving the problem.

That was part of the discussion about whether or how much personal choices contribute to poverty. Attitudes on seemed to become different after we went through the various sessions and site visits. From his assignment Paul talked about Johnston’s vision for a smart community and pointed out the role that dealing poverty has in that. Steve told us about how, when travelling, he stayed at the Golden Temple of Amritsar and he said that in Sikhism begging is fogiven but that those who are well off are generous. He said he thought that was a good way for things to be.

Over lunch we had brown bags and went on site visits. We visited four sites total, but had to choose on two of them. Some of went to Southwood Community Centre while the others were touring the food bank and later they went to Argus Residence for Young People while we were at the food bank.

Southwood

Through volunteerism and community partnership the Southwood Community Centre promotes community growth, providing affordable recreation and family support programs.

In Cambridge, all complexes of subsidized housing have one unit that serves as a community centre. At Southwood they have a “breakfast club” for children, so that they don’t have to go to school hungry. They have a playground in the back yard. They were having a program for Ramadan and Eid. For their co-op hours at the food bank they can volunteer at the centre, which is an example of co-operation between the organizations.

Bridges

After Southwood we went to the west end of downtown Galt to visit Bridges.

The Bridges
Provides a safe and warm non-judgemental place where anyone no matter what their needs can find friendship & community supports. The Bridges is a program, which strivesto respond, in a meaningful way to the needs of the most abandoned of our city’s poor and homeless people. These needs include the basic physical needs of shelter, food, and warm clothing, and the deeply human needs of compassion, dignity and feelings of self-worth. It is the aim of the program to enable all those involved to share their individual riches and poverties with one another. This interaction makes possible a discovery of our common humanity, which helps eliminate barriers and leads to the bulding of new and enriching relationships.

Anne and Gary told us about The Bridges which is run by Cambridge Shelter Corp. It officially opened in May. The facility has shelter for adults and a few units for families. They have a kitchen and a hall and separate shelter space for men and women. They have a breakfast Thursday mornings, partly to feed them, but also to check that people are okay, because it would be unusual for someone to miss free breakfast.

The family units are important and more were added to the plans before it was built. If a family doesn’t have shelter they will often be split up into different places, so the family units maintain the family as a unit.

They make people keep a schedule with strict times for food and far when they can be in the space. Havign a schedule will help them transition to having a job where they have to be in a cetain place at a certain time.

They also have a trustee program where people with addictions can have their paycheque be administered by someone else who will pay transfer their money to pay bills and pass to them an allowance.

They also have limits on the time that people can live their. Gary said that some people get angry when it is time for them to leave, but they come back later and thank him.

One of the challenges they have now is a lack of traditional housing when people leave the shelter , they need an inexpensive place to live. In Galt much of the affordable housing is being renovated to accommodate students at the recently relocated Waterloo School of Architecture to whom landlords can charge higher rents.

I asked what they key to ensuring that people do successfully make the transition is. Anne said that it is important that people have support through the whole process. Someone else asked why the need is growing and Anne said it was because of our growing population.

One thing that I didn’t know was the extent to which organization emphasize transition, which is very important.

Cambridge Self-Help Food Bank

Then my half of the class went to the food bank and the other part went to Argus.

The Cambridge Self-Help Food Bank offers food and support to people and community groups in need within Cambridge and North Dumfries. We encourage self-reliance through programs and services.

The food bank has so many programs. We walked through the whole building and saw the different parts.

• Emergency food hampers.
• A food co-op where people can pay $9 a month and do four hours of volunteer service and get food twice a month (enough for 3-4 days).
• They have a kitchen out of which they do catering where people can get job experience (they catered the food for our LWR community learning day that day).
• They have a Small Steps for women to gain skills they need to work.

They have many other programs too.

Argus Residence for Young People

To provide emergency and transitional shelter for young people through supportive community partnerships.

I didn’t get to visit Argus, but the other part of the class said it was good. They told us about how the facility didn’t just provide shelter, but also structure and support and transition.

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When we came back Pat, who is director of the food bank told us about her experiences with poverty.

Then we had a final discussion. People’s attitudes had changed and we learned and experienced a lot of new things about poverty.