For people wondering what they can do to make a difference when it comes to homelessness, the Campbell River and District Coalition to End Homelessness has an answer.
The coalition recently created a document resource just for that purpose. The document suggests things like volunteering, donating, advocacy, education, and even voting to help make a difference.
“We noticed that we were getting more and more emails at the Coalition and homelessness just from self-described regular community members who were looking for ways to give back or unsure about how they could help,” said coalition executive director Stefanie Hendrickson. “This is a very hopeful sign that the community is starting to become engaged and reach out more.
“There’s just a sense of sort of helplessness when you look at such a complex challenge such as homelessness and and people don’t really know how they can help,” she added.
One of the categories Hendrickson emphasized was the “stay informed” category. It includes suggestions like learning about homelessness and housing insecurity through social media, or by visiting reputable websites and more.
“A lot of folks they get a lot of their information from social media and a lot of what you hear on social media simply doesn’t have a lot of truth to it,” she said. “we wanted to give folks like a place to start to really find evidence informed and data-driven resources so that people can learn about the causes of homelessness.”
The document will be available on the Coalition’s website. However, Hendrickson said that “we’re always happy for people to reach out.
“Of course people are welcome to reach out if they’re interested and what we hope is that we’ll be able to add to this this document. So community members if they’ve found other ways to give back or be connected they can email us and let us know and we’re happy to consider additions or alterations to this document and we hope that it will sort of evolve over time,” she said.
The guide is available online here.
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marc.kitteringham@campbellrivermirror.com
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