Tell us about yourself and your position at EPL!

My name is Cassidy Munro, and I am the Community Librarian at the Strathcona Branch of the Edmonton Public Library! I’ve been a Community Librarian with EPL for almost 7 years now. As a Community Librarian, my role is to connect with the community and find out more about their needs and the barriers they face and work with them to see how the library can support them. It also includes working closely with community partners like YESS.

I love working at the library because we do offer so much to so many different people. Truly everyone can and does use the library, and I love helping make that possible. One of my favourite parts of my job is surprising someone with a service or resource they didn’t know we could offer. I also get to come out into the community and connect with people where they’re at—like YESS youth.

How do EPL and YESS collaborate to create safety and community for people who need it most?

EPL and YESS have collaborated in a number of ways over the years. Some of this work has been looking at policies and procedures and sharing that research widely with the youth-serving community so that youth can feel welcome and included everywhere they may go. It has also looked like offering programming both at YESS locations and in the library. Sometimes programming meets specific needs, and sometimes it’s a fun way to explore a library resource while allowing EPL staff to connect with and build relationships with those who YESS serves. Button making and, more recently, robotics have been really popular. By building these relationships where young people already feel safe and have community, we are able to support them better with safety and community when they do come to the library to use a computer, borrow something, or just hang out. [possible blockquote] I’ve had young people tell me that they never would have felt comfortable coming to the library and asking for help from EPL staff if we hadn’t met previously at YESS’ Armoury Resource Centre.

What is one thing you wish the wider community knew about people who access resources like YESS?

Asking for help is HARD. Even though it is absolutely not a weakness to need help, asking for it can feel so vulnerable. I wish people could see the true strength of people who access resources like YESS because they are doing hard things every day just by being open to support and help.

Tell us about yourself and your position at Bissell!

Hi! I’m Nola Visser, the Manager of Permanent Supportive Housing with Bissell Centre. I have been with Bissell for about a year and a half and in that time have had the opportunity to work with the team at Hope Terrace. Hope Terrace is supportive housing for adults who have been diagnosed with FASD and have experienced houselessness. At Hope Terrace, each resident has their own suite and we have staff on site 24/7 to provide different supports for everyone who lives there. Recently, we have moved into the King Edward Park neighborhood. Before moving here, we were located near the Stadium downtown. My work focuses on working with the team to provide wholistic, wrap around supports for those living in the building and engaging with the community of King Edward Park. I am passionate about community engagement and am looking forward to continuing to build strong partnerships with the King Edward Park Community. Many of my favorite moments so far have been seeing the positive and healthy impact supportive housing has on the residents who live in our building.

How does Bissell provide safe spaces to meet your clients where they’re at?

At Hope Terrace and Bissell at large we cultivate a culture of trust and dignity. We have cultivated this culture by building meaningful relationships with the residents which allows them to feel safe and free to be themselves. In our building we have created a few different safe spaces that help us meet our residents where they are at. In our common area, we have created a welcoming space where residents can come and share a meal together, watch TV, play X-Box, color or simply just hang out with staff. Hope Terrace also has a Snoezelen Room. This room is a multi-sensory room that helps people regulate when they are feeling scared, angry, sad, happy or just need a moment to recalibrate. Many of our residents use this space to meet with staff to talk through difficulties or challenges that come up for them throughout the day. We also work towards ensuring residents feel that their home is safe. This is done through wellness checks and meeting with residents in their home to discuss supports they need or any goals they are looking for us to support them in.

How do Bissell and YESS collaborate to create a community for people who need it most?

YESS and Bissell have begun collaborating by striving to be good neighbors in our communities. Recently, we have begun doing community safety walks. This is an amazing way for our organizations to work together to build a safe and vibrant community for people who are accessing our services. Twice a day, YESS and Bissell, walk through both neighborhoods and pick up any garbage they see. During these walks, we also support any community member who may be looking for support or a safe place to go. We also meet regularly together with multiple different neighborhood groups to advocate and work together so that the people accessing our services feel safe and welcomed, not only in our buildings and programs but in the communities, they live in.

What is one thing you wish the wider community knew about people who access resources like Bissell?

 I wish the wider community knew how incredibly innovative, passionate and joyful our residents are. They all bring something unique and special to the table and are looking for different ways to engage in activities and communities using their own strengths.

February is Black History Month! Here at YESS, we support a community of youth as diverse as the wider community. We have collaborated with the African Canadian Civic Engagement Council (ACCEC) in previous programs and continue to engage with their work.

ACCEC is a Black-led, Black-founded registered NGO that promotes and strengthens opportunities for African, Caribbean, Black, and Racialized Communities. The African Canadian Civic Engagement Council’s (ACCEC) mandate is to protect and promote all people of African descent’s dignity and human rights while celebrating our people’s significant contributions to society and worldwide.

ACCEC is based in Edmonton, but works nationally, and is an innovative program in the Alberta landscape.

We worked with ACCEC within our Cohort Transitional Residence Pilot Project in 2021-2022. This pilot program cam specifically from the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic that made it difficult for youth to build positive connections. The program used “family-like” cohorts of 3-5 youth to bolster safe and meaningful peer interactions that created “bubbles” that meant youth were safe to not wear masks and to minimize social distancing within their cohorts in the program.

This highly autonomous program saw changes in the trajectory of many youth who had previously been termed “difficult to house” or who had been trapped in homelessness by a myriad of barriers. This “Bridge Housing” style program had the same core purpose of giving individuals experiencing homelessness a safer space to exist in, given the health risks associated with crowded shelters during a global pandemic. The primary objective of Bridge Housing programs is to provide a safe place to live while waiting for a permanent housing to come through, with a target goal of 6-month maximum stay. We used this base and broadened our approach to include the social, emotional, and psychological development impacts that the pandemic was having on youth in particular, as the work that all youth do in their adolescence in these areas was being stunted by isolation and missed opportunities.

Around this same time, ACCEC was developing their own stabilization program. The African, Caribbean & Black Stabilization Program (ACB Program) was initially funded by the province and started out as a COVID response model that recognized the importance of belonging, connection, promoting meaningful relationships, and working with youth families and natural supports.

This program found a home with its own cohort of four beds at the Cohort Transitional Residence Pilot Project. Focused on building connections, healing from trauma, and empowering youth to achieve their goals, this collaboration between ACCEC and YESS was a natural fit. ACCEC’s Afrocentric model to create a therapeutic environment is based on the African traditions of sanofka (the belief that people must return to their roots to move forward, from the Akan language in  Ghana) and ubuntu (“I am because you are,” a philosophy from South Africa).

“It’s rooted in relationship. It’s rooted in community. It’s rooted in healing. It’s rooted in accountability — so that’s what helps a lot of these youth heal,” said Dunia Nur, president of ACCEC, in an interview with CBC in 2021.

By collaborating, both ACCEC and YESS were able to benefit from a specific Afrocentric perspective and the diverse staff that were available to youth.

“You start to see this amazing community collaboration of staff and youth from so many different walks of life being like, ‘Hey, we can be safe and vulnerable here,’” Alice Mwemera, who was then the supervisor of the Cohort Program and is now involved in program research and development at YESS, told CBC in an interview. “So instead, I can get to know you as a person and you can get to know me. How cool is that?”

Learn more about the African Canadian Civic Engagement Council on their website at accec.ca

Read the CBC article “’Rooted in healing’: New housing facility gives marginalized Black youth a place to rebuild” by Andrea Huncar here