Program helps at-risk people in the community start fresh with Clean Slate

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This article was published 18/01/2023 (1008 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Stephen Mason wanted a way to make money and stay out of trouble. When he heard the Downtown Community Safety Partnership was hiring, he jumped at the opportunity.

Growing up in the North End and what he calls “the street life,” he was recruited by a local community activist for the DCSP’s new Clean Slate program, which seeks to support at-risk community members by employing them for downtown beautification projects.

Mason became the organization’s first hire in July.

“I came a long way,” he said. “I came from the street life, the gang life, at a young age. I’ve been staying out of trouble ever since I got onto this team, and I’m enjoying it.”

The early success of the 12-month Clean Slate program has inspired the province to invest $150,000 for the DCSP to put toward marketing its cleaning and maintenance services — staffed by at-risk people in the community — to downtown businesses, an announcement made Wednesday afternoon said.

Since July, its six staff members who are employed full time have cleaned up more than 45,000 litres of trash, including over 600 needles.

The province wants to invest “more substantially” in programming that brings in people who have been through the justice system and finds them meaningful employment, Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen said.

“We’re looking to continue our engagement on this program… and to work to expand it, where we can expand it and to do more of this,” he said at a funding announcement at N’Dinawemak — Our Relatives’ Place homeless shelter Wednesday afternoon.

“And I would issue a challenge to businesses and others who might be involved in the community to say, ‘This is something that we think is a good model that we can do more of, that we can get individuals involved back in the community in a good way.’”

N’Dinawemak is Clean Slate’s base of operations, and cleanup crews — mainly tasked with litter pick-up and cleaning graffiti — focus on the inner city. The program lasts 12 months, after which employees “graduate” and the DCSP works to find them long-term employment based on the skills they’ve developed.

“The success of the program is based on providing low-barrier employment opportunity coupled with the DCSP in-house system navigation support,” said Elizabeth Pilcher, DCSP’s senior operations director. “The support provided helps the team members develop necessary life and employment skills.”

The funding will go toward expanding the program to provide different services, including laundry and snow removal, and possibly bringing in more people to the program.

Just a few months of Clean Slate have made a tangible impact, Pilcher said.

“There’s been a lot of successes internally in the program,” she said. “They’ve expanded into getting part-time jobs, high school credits and just a lot of internal first steps that some of us take for granted.”

Clean Slate member Nicholas Candaele supervises the rest of the crew. He said he hopes the program succeeds and grows, and that the people he works with move on to long-term work.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “I’ve never quite seen a program like it, and to see the successes we’ve already accomplished is amazing.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca