Tragedies help spark stunning turnaround

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/11/2017 (2884 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last year, this was a time of crisis for a street-level charity that is supposed to look after our most vulnerable citizens, yet was having trouble trying to look after itself.

Two people had died in very public ways that directly and indirectly involved the Main Street Project and its work.

First, in late October, 25-year-old Wesley Elwick was discovered dead of an apparent fentanyl overdose in a room at the community health centre’s Mainstay Residence, where he had been recovering from treatment for his drug addiction. Then in early December, a 57-year-old woman was found frozen to death on a downtown street.

When young Elwick died, Rick Lees had just started as the development and fundraising director; the Main Street Project was on course to lose $300,000 that fiscal year. By Dec. 1 — after the abrupt departure of the organization’s executive director but only days before the woman’s body was discovered — Lees had assumed leadership of an organization long in need of an intervention.

“This was an organization that was in a bit of turmoil,” Lees said recently.

It was an institution that over the years, as Lees saw it, had lost its way.

Lees’ first anniversary as executive director approached this month as we sat in his office overlooking Main Street and recalled that tragic time late last autumn. How much has changed for the better since. Last year, I had written columns on both deaths, including one recounting a city hall meeting where Siloam Mission wanted $2 million while Lees was pleading for a mere $70,000 to fund more staff. He linked his request to Elwick’s death. “That (Elwick’s death) shouldn’t have happened,” Lees told me at that time. “And it would not have happened if we had had the proper staffing in that facility. That’s my firm belief.”

Two days later, the middle-aged woman was found dead on a day when the temperature suddenly had plunged to a wind-chilled -32 C. The second tragic death sent Lees looking for more help to get a Main Street patrol van on the street; it had been idle because the program didn’t have the money to operate it. If it had been on the road, he argued, it might have been able to rescue the woman.

The image of someone freezing to death on a city street appears to have been the catalyst for the concern and awareness that, nearly a year later, has made a difference not only to the people who live on the street, but also to the Main Street Project itself. Back when it happened, Lees accelerated the patrol van program’s restart by putting it back on the street even without a funding fill-up.

“That went literally from nothing, to running it at a $1,000 loss, to your story, to the United Way kicking in $20,000,” he recalled. “And we raised probably $50,000 in donations to keep it on the road last year.”

Suddenly, the Main Street Project seemed to have found its way again. That’s probably in part because the organization’s complex role has been misunderstood and overshadowed by more high-powered and high profile organizations in what amounts to Winnipeg’s poverty industry district. It’s also partly because of the leadership shown by Lees and the Main Street Project’s volunteer board of directors.

According to Lees, the program’s $6.3-million budget — half of which goes to addiction and mental health services — is up by about $1 million over last year. That extra funding has helped balance the budget this year. So have some tweaks, such as having Save-On-Foods and others donate coffee instead of the Main Street Project paying $60,000 for the roughly 50,000 cups they poured last year.

Then there’s the growth that’s come in the past year.

That includes the addition of a food bank next door to the Main Street office; it’s cleverly and thoughtfully set up as a downtown grocery store, where about 80 people arrive each Thursday morning to pick out what they need to eat. That same site — the former Meats on Main — serves as an expanded kitchen for 75 Martha St., where the shelter, treatment centre and transition housing is located. And next year, Red River College is planning to have a diploma bakery training program set up for those who Lees refers to as “marginalized.”

There’s even more, though.

When Lees took over, the not-for-profit community health agency was so out-of-sight, out-of-mind that it was receiving only $25,000 a year in public donations.

“That’s now up to about $150,000.”

And in September, the Winnipeg Foundation began administering a foundation for the Main Street Project that was created by an anonymous donor’s generosity. The donor had given $20,000, which the Winnipeg Foundation topped up by another $15,000.

You also should know that the Main Street Project has received an $88,000 government grant for the purchase of a Sprinter van with wheelchair accessibility and that by mid-December, the other patrol van should be out looking for and looking after street people during the worst of what’s forecast as an extreme winter.

Yes, I’m happy to report, the Main Street Project appears well on the road to its own recovery.

But, like a loved one with an addiction, it will never stop needing our support.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca