If you live in the Greater Vancouver area, I am writing to invite you to a meeting. The Burnaby Association for Community Inclusion (BACI) is currently exploring with New Way Community how we might set up more effective ways of supporting individuals in the Downtown Eastside. At the same time Community Living BC (CLBC) is working with the VPD to identify folk on the VPD list of some 400 “chronic offenders” who may need direct intentional support. The outcome is that we have a groundswell of energy developing around a new effort to provide “family pods” and “a sense of belonging within a genuinely welcoming community” for people with serious challenges. In many cases, the individuals who we would like to support actually have significant funding attached to them via CLBC –enabling us to be far more confident of achieving a sustainable model /structure within which to do this work. As an additional piece to this, we are very aware of the enormous capacity, competency and passion that exists within the wider society for building support frameworks, many faith communities and other groups share a common commitment to being and building inclusive communities. We are seriously exploring how we might leverage faith communities, secular groups and informal “volunteer” networks to provide supportive community and 24/7 relationships to people who are extremely alienated and dislocated. This is an invitation to join the conversation and attend an overview of the new developments. I hope this will be of interest to you if you are personally a) committed to making a difference in the lives of those who are often seen as the most troubled and most troublesome within the DTES b) supportive of developing an inclusive intentional community- one with a deep commitment to those who are otherwise often excluded. To that end, this is an invitation to participate in a discussion and information session on one of the following dates: • August 7th at 7pm at 408 Union Street • August 11th at 7pm (also at 408 Union Street). If this is of any interest to you, please do let me know at jricmatthews@gmail which date will work for you (or if neither date works but you are nonetheless interested in hearing more). PLEASE FEEL VERY FREE TO INVITE OTHERS WHO YOU THINK MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED! I really do hope you might be willing to join in this conversation!
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 19:12:49 +0000
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