Nearly $1 million in provincial and federal funding will go toward medical care at a drop-in centre in memory of Tina Fontaine, the 15-year-old Indigenous girl whose death in 2014 sent shock waves across the country.
Not-for-profit organization Ndinawemaaganag Endaawaad, which runs Tina’s Safe Haven, a 24-hour drop-in for at-risk youth, will receive $586,000 in provincial funding for operating costs and programming. Another $400,000, through the National Action Plan to End Gender Based Violence, will be used to cover the cost of a weekly public health nurse shift at the centre from the Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre.
“We know that so often youth are not able to access the health care that they need, and the supports that they need, including counselling and mental-health support, so this funding supports that work in a real, substantial way,” Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine said at a news conference Friday at the monument to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls at The Forks.
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Amber Laplante arrived at Friday’s funding announcement holding a sign in Fontaine’s memory, cut in the shape of a red dress.
Approximately 50 youths and young adults between the ages of 13 and 24 visit Tina’s Safe Haven each day, about 30 of them saying overnight.
The Selkirk Avenue centre offers laundry services, phones, computers and scheduled arts and sports programming.
The nurse will be able to provide “holistic” primary care with a focus on supporting Indigenous youth, Ndinawemaaganag Endaawaad executive director Shanlee Scott said.
Additional supports, including addictions treatment and women’s health care, are also being considered.
“Often our young people, when they’re trying to access health care in community — going to a clinic, going to the hospital — there’s often preconceived notions about, perhaps, why they’re there and they’re not shown the degree of respect as a human being that they should be afforded,” Scott said. “So I think that they hesitate.”
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Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine said the funding is meant to support practical resources for youth counselling and mental-health supports.
Friday’s announcement came one day before the 10th anniversary of when Fontaine’s body was found in the Red River near the Alexander Docks. A suspect charged with murder in her death was acquitted in 2018.
Amber Laplante was among the crowd gathered to hear the funding announcement. She arrived holding a sign in Fontaine’s memory, cut in the shape of a red dress.
She called the funding “monumental” and hopes the province continues to offer consistent support to at-risk youth and the families of MMIWG in the coming years.
“Families need continual supports through those processes,” she said. “They deserve that help and that guidance that goes well beyond victim services and those interactions with the police and the justice systems.”
The provincial government is planning to release its formal MMIWG strategy later this year.
NIC ADAM / FREE PRESS
The provincial and federal funding was announced just a day before the 10th anniversary of the day 15-year-old Tina Fontaine was found dead in the Red River near the Alexander Docks.
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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