Hello everyone and Happy Spring!

YESS started 2020 with a very strong financial profile and a lot of excitement about the momentum we are gaining. We spent the winter months taking care of each other, celebrating some of our wins, and continuing to build upon our growing foundation of structure, processes, and trauma-informed practice. We have seen significant successes with the work of our Trauma Support Team (we have delivered over 100 individual therapy sessions and many informal group sessions since April 2019, and we have seen our EPS and crisis calls decrease) and we have been thrilled with the success of our new Youth Education and Employment Program that provides a low-barrier entrance into life, education, and employment skills as well as job shadowing and work experience with corporate community partners. We have also been working hard with our youth agency and homelessness partners to develop and improve our city strategy for the prevention of youth homelessness. In the coming year, we will begin initial planning around evolving YESS to fit within a municipal and provincial strategy for the prevention of youth homelessness. Prevention can be both early prevention (ensuring a young person never becomes homeless) and later prevention (ensuring a young person doesn’t become further entrenched in homelessness). At YESS, we are focused on late prevention—ensuring that the youth who visit us have the connections back to family or safe housing situations as well as life skills, emotional regulation, relationship building, and  trauma healing support to help them safely and appropriately integrate into community.

As the sun shines and the new shoots and bulbs grow outside, we are furiously growing our capacity and our knowledge to prepare for the big work ahead of us.

This spring, I invite you to join us in our excitement about the future—celebrating is much more fun together!

Good winter, everyone,

As I age and move through the cold months with more focus on my discomfort, I realize I have lost my childhood joy of the gifts of winter: the snow, the bright sun, the quiet contemplation, and the wrapping of ourselves in warm comfort.  We say good evening, as we greet our fellow humans in the glow of the moonlight, intentionally appreciating the gifts of the night and acknowledging the blanket of comfort and renewal that it can bring. And so, I am choosing now to acknowledge the gifts and the joy of winter with an intentional greeting of good winter and a smile.

I have spent weeks thinking about what to write about for this edition. These letters are important to me. They help me remember what to focus on. What do I need to say? What is it time for? 

And I have been lost. 

I have been lost for a while now. 

I have been lost in the intense mission of this powerful yet delicate organization. I have been lost in the frustration and anger of a system and community that is so unfairly balanced. I have been lost in the pain of the young people I see hurting everyday: lost in their deaths, their abandonment, and their disappearances. I have been lost in the pain of a staff that is exhausted and hurt and yet still so dedicated to a solution. I have been lost in my own pain in experiencing this, and the pain of my family, both as they navigate their own lives and as they experience my pain with me. 

I chose to move into the not for profit space because my heart hurt—I needed passion and purpose (and boy did I find it). 

But I left something behind: joy. 

And I realized this week, I didn’t lose joy. 

I left it. 

I refused it. 

I let myself feel the deep hurt of our young people, of our parents and families, of the staff, of my fellow CEOs and EDs, of communities, and of my own family. But I did not let myself experience joy. How could I when there is so much suffering, when there is so much work to be done?

My intention was true—I wanted to help. But I became so lost in the trauma that I forgot what brings us out.

The opposite of trauma, in my perspective, is joy. Laughter, dance, sunshine, sport, art, music, math—whatever lights you up. Joy is vulnerable and open. It lets the light in to heal and detoxify. It is not a state that we achieve only when we are done feeling our trauma, it is something we choose to allow so that we can heal, a little bit at a time. 

In my own denial of joy, I realize that I have denied others the experience and leadership of my joy. My joy is powerful and contagious. Our joy is a gift to ourselves and others. As much as we need bearing witness of our painful stories, our collective experiences of joy can heal us all.

And so, what is it time for at YESS? It is time for a little bit of joy. We have come a long way in 2 1/2 years. We have emerged out of some very hard times and while I know there are more ahead of us, it is time to celebrate and be vulnerable in our joy. 

This good winter, I wish that you give yourselves the permission to feel JOY and celebrate the good things with us, with your loved ones, with your community. 

Together, we can heal, a little bit at a time. 

With my own love and joy,

(header photo by Leroy Schulz)

In the winter months our Armoury Resource Centre operates on extended hours to provide a safe and warm place for youth who might otherwise have to risk the elements outside. We work with other vulnerable youth supporting agencies to determine these hours so that between us we are always providing youth with a safe place and also taking care of frontline youth workers to prevent burnout.

Armoury Resource Centre Winter Hours – effective November 15, 2019 to March 15, 2020:

For youth who are leaving the Armoury Resource Centre to go to another program, we always strive for a “warm handoff” and allow youth to wait indoors for their pickup rather than off property.

Exposure to winter weather is dangerous for individuals experiencing homelessness. You are part of the community keeping vulnerable people safe this winter season.

Here are some ways our city works together to keep everyone safe in times of extreme cold:

• if you see someone on the streets who you believe is in distress, call 211 to speak to the 24/7 diversion team
• additional winter warming sites open throughout the city with extended hours
• in the event that shelters are at or near capacity and extreme cold (-20 or colder) is in the forecast, LRT stations will open as overnight warming sites
• in times of extreme cold, ETS vehicles will not deny passengers without tickets

It takes all of us to keep everyone in our community safe and warm in the winter months. It is a good time to remember how much we can all take care of each other.

This year, YESS was invited to contribute to a special issue of Parity, Australia’s national homelessness publication. In their October issue, Preventing and Sustaining Exits from Youth Homelessness in Canada, there are articles from agencies across Canada including “Changing the Definition of Success” by our own Camiel Friend, Nexus Shelter Team Lead, and Jessica Day, Director of Program Innovations. We are so proud for this opportunity to share the thought leadership of our Programs team in an international publication.

“Understanding A Way Home Canada’s National Roadmap for the Prevention of Youth Homelessness helped us re-evaluate what was needed in order to help our youth successfully reintegrate into communities: YESS and the partners and community around us must provide safety and stability, help build self-worth, help build the tools for resilience, and help to establish a sense of belonging within the community.” 

The article that I wrote with our Director of Program Innovations, Jessica Day, entitled “Changing the Definition of Success” was our way of introducing one of the most imperative aspects of addressing the trauma of our youth:  when we measure progress and outcomes with demographics and stats, we are missing the individualized unique stories of each youth we serve. It was important that we acknowledge the various barriers our youth face in a collective manner and to present this information in a relatable and understanding way to the general population, who may not have experienced these adversities themselves.

These stories are just as important as strategic stats or demographics and, thanks to the National Roadmap for the Prevention of Youth Homelessness, help to educate communities on what work and support is needed.  As well, we were able to portray how the National Framework can and needs to be applied to local agencies to help increase effective services, broaden the outcomes and stories of the youth served, and help to find a collective language and voice between the national research and our local youth stories. The language used between youth and frontline staff, amongst frontline agencies, from frontline to management and agency management to national coalitions and so on, can be a barrier all on its own. We have the ability to translate this in a way that has a clear guideline and understanding not only to our youth, but also to the people in charge of making important decisions on behalf of our youth.

This reciprocal bridge of communication directly impacts the National Roadmap for the Prevention of Youth Homelessness and its success, as well as directly impacting the local success of our individual agency. This article was a wonderful opportunity to have in-depth conversations about barriers, about language, about community goals, and most importantly how to support our youth while maintaining youth-focused strategies.

– Camiel Friend, Nexus Team Lead

Read Camiel’s article and other articles from Canadian frontline youth workers at homelesshub.ca.

Learn the storied history of our Whyte Ave Building

The YESS Whyte Ave building is 105 years old this year! Built in 1914, it was intended to be a fire hall with room for two pumper engines, stables for five horses, and quarters for seven men. The fire hall was never used, though, as the First World War broke out and reassigned the men and resources needed to run the fire hall.

It wasn’t until 1926 that the building was put to use again. City Council voted to rent the building to the Salvation Army for a dollar a year and it became the Eventide Home for Single Elderly Men with accommodation for 30-40 residents. The Salvation Army ran the building until 1979, completing major expansions and renovations. The building was turned back over to the city, who considered a variety of options including demolishing the existing building to make way for a modern fire hall.

It just so happened that around this same time, a group of concerned individuals—mostly those involved with social work—had started to come together to find a solution for a specific social services problem: until the age of 16, youth came under the jurisdiction of Child Welfare authorities, but would not qualify for social assistance until the age of 18. For youth in crisis and experiencing homelessness aged 16 to 17, resources were non-existent.

To solve this problem, they began to organize resources for youth in need and by 1981 they needed an official space to continue their mission. While there was no property available in the inner city for them, there was an old brick building on Whyte Ave. In order to raise funds to renovate the building and operate a shelter, they formed the Youth Emergency Shelter Society (YESS).

Through generous donations from community individuals and businesses and the hard work of many volunteers, many much-needed repairs and renovations were completed and the Youth Emergency Shelter opened its doors on April 18, 1982. We have been providing shelter and resources for youth in Edmonton ever since.

An old building that sees as much use as our Whyte Ave facility is a constant work in progress—from urgent fixes to beautiful renovations—that is maintained by our incredible Facilities team and the ongoing help of volunteers.

So much has changed even since YESS has occupied this building, most notably the expansion and diversification of programs and resources for youth. YESS now runs three facilities: the overnight shelter and supporting housing Graham’s Place on Whyte Ave, the Armoury Resource Centre for daytime programs, and Shanoa’s Place on the west end. It was this expansion that led us to change our name to Youth Empowerment and Support Services to better reflect the services we are able to offer youth.

One thing has stayed the same. This stalwart brick building has always sought to provide safety in our community, as a fire hall, as the Salvation Army’s Eventide Home, and now as YESS. And from day one, YESS has been a place where the community comes together to create safe, empowering spaces for youth who have experienced crisis and trauma. We know that we are not alone in this and never have been. We are all part of creating a city and a community where we can heal together.