A van has been donated to Main Street Project to take people to Indigenous ceremonies and cultural events, which will help them keep in touch with their spiritual roots.
The vehicle will pick up people at the downtown shelter and other programs in the city and take them to community events, sweat lodges or to pick medicinal plants outside the city.
“We know a lot of folks don’t often leave the core of the city, especially if (they’re) homeless. So this opportunity, I know for a number of people, it’s their first time getting out of the city in many years, if ever,” Main Street Project executive director Jamil Mahmood said Friday.
“We know how healing nature is, and having that opportunity to get out there is such a great thing.”
It’s the first van in the shelter’s fleet that will provide services other than emergency support.
“We work on the teachings of Indigenous people… we’re going to go fishing, we’re going to learn how to harvest animals — if we see a deer on the road, and if it’s safe enough to pick up that deer, we’re picking up that deer, and we’re taking it, and we’re showing people how to harvest those deer,” said Vanessa Gamblin, director of Indigenous relations.
Gamblin believes it’s the first such program to be operated by a homeless shelter in Canada.
“I think it’s probably critical that this moves throughout Canada for the rest of the homeless shelters and other sectors,” she said.
The $85,000 for the vehicle was donated by a fund spearheaded by Winnipeg Transit workers. It began in 2019 after transit employees asked Main Street Project for advice on de-escalation techniques and how to work with marginalized people.
The fund has made donations to other non-profits and is inspired by what Transit workers see on the front lines daily, said Randy Tonnellier, a Transit worker who’s part of the organization.
“Transit employees are out there working with the citizens of Winnipeg every day. We’re seeing homelessness (and) addiction (and) people in need,” he said. “So that’s kind of what helps us inspire us to pick projects.”
Main Street Project has six other vans that are primarily used to hand out emergency supplies and services.
malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
Malak Abas
Reporter
Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.
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