Educating for Change

Overview:

In an ideal world...

everyone has a roof overhead, clothes on their back, and food in their stomach. Reality shows us that this is not the case. Calgary Homeless Foundation estimates that 15,000 – 17,000 individuals stayed in shelters in 2010. This is the equivalent of having the town of Cochrane living on our city streets.

In a city known as being both prosperous and progressive, it is intolerable for any member of our community to be homeless. Homelessness or the threat of homelessness affects individuals and families from every segment of our population.

It's time to make a change! It's time to get everyone involved! We need your help to do this!!!

Homeless Awareness Calgary (HAC) is a group of Calgarians, supported by dedicated partners, focused on educating our neighbours about the complexities of homelessness in order to inspire our communities to take action.

In order to ensure that all Calgarians have a safe, affordable, and accessible place to call home, everyone needs to be part of the solution! People from all walks of life need to raise their voices and let the decision-makers know that homelessness is not acceptable.

The first step in creating change is education. It is through education that Calgarians can challenge their stereotypes and can start to engage in the movement to prevent and end homelessness.

We have proven success in doing this - increased awareness about homelessness, increased participation in preventing and ending homelessness, increased requests for more learning! We need your help to continue our success and increase our reach!

Homeless Awareness Calgary (HAC) provides unique opportunities for Calgarians to start the process. We offer interactive activities throughout the year to facilitate learning. One of our most popular activities is “Night Tours of the Street”. Calgarians from all walks of life are provided the opportunity to take a 2 hour walking tour of downtown Calgary led by someone that is currently or has previously experienced homelessness (Tour Guides). During the tour, Tour Guides share their stories – how they came to experience homelessness, how they survived on the streets, and, if they are housed, what was helpful/not helpful in that process and the challenges they face today. During the tour, participants will be shown where Tour Guides spent time and have opportunities to ask questions. Tour Guides are joined by Support People that work directly with people experiencing homelessness and they too share their experiences.

We also offer other interactive activities such as "Standing Room Only" and the "Poverty Quiz" to help Calgarians better understand the realities of homelessness and how people can contribute to preventing and ending homelessness in our city.

To date, in 2011, HAC has already provided over 40 Night Tours and 30 other learning opportunities. All of these opportunities were provided free of cost, by two staff, and without any official advertising of the programs! We are at the point that we can not meet the need!

In order to keep up with the requests for presentations and Night Tours, HAC needs to expand. We are in need of an additional staff position to deliver our educational programming.

Imagine the impact that HAC could make with more resources! We could offer more learning opportunities. We could promote our activities to diverse groups. We could develop new and exciting tools to engage people in preventing and ending homelessness. We could support more groups in the change effort! We could make a bigger difference!

In order to run the program from April 2012 – December 2012, HAC requires $116,000 in new dollars. This covers: one full-time staff dedicated fully to education, public relations, facility costs, program development and delivery, and administrative costs. We need your vote to secure half of this cost - $58,000.

We need your help to make this happen! Please vote for us daily. Please encourage your friends, family and colleagues to vote! We can make this happen!!!!!

To learn more about our programs please visit our website at: www.homelessawareness.ca