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Two great guys from Castle Carpet One in Parksville – Landon and Mike – donated new flooring and instalation for our Community Care Mobile. Perfect job and highly recommended – friendly, helpful, and concerned for our community. Thank You from the team at Manna Landon and Mike Before After

Mahin and friends drop off beautiful hand-made hats and scarves as well as bags of lovely clothes.

Alex Plonka of the Seaside Cruizers presents a cheque for $2000 to Robin Campbell of the Manna Homeless Society.

Teegan bringing a trunk load of groceries collected up from Halloween haul from the community

Jocelyn Asselin (Community Relations Manager) brings gifts of socks scarfs and hats from the Gardens Seniors’ Centre in Qualicum Beach.

Charlotte knits the toques and Vern assists by making the pom poms. Together this team averages 20 hats per visit and has hit the 100-mark this week.

This has been a damp, cold, snowy time for our homeless folks in the Oceanside area. To date, there is still no weather shelter in Oceanside. This snow has caused all sorts of problems, particularly because the snowfall has happened on the weekend. Because other support services in our area are not available on the weekend, Manna is working around the clock to offer support. We have been able to give out tarps, warm and dry clothes, food and food vouchers, as well as to get some people into trailers, containers and shared accommodations. However, an extreme weather shelter is needed. It is very difficult for Manna to assist all those in need on weekends while other services are closed. The majority of the poor people have very little and need support from the community. We sincerely hope this is the last winter without an extreme weather shelter and that our local leaders will get together to show compassion to our homeless in Oceanside by providing such a shelter.

We are very thankful for our generous community over the years. These past two years of pandemic have stretched our ability to respond to the needs in our community. While we’ve not been able to independently meet on Saturdays as we’ve done in the past, we have been responding to phone requests and operating upon the invitation at the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen and an RV park on Smithers Road. Sadly, the Covid restrictions have made it impossible for us to offer meaningful participation for our volunteers to build relationships with our friends. The Covid pandemic also isolated many of our vulnerable/traumatized contacts which has resulted in the tragic loss of 20 friends through opioid overdose. The resulting emotional impact upon our marginalized community is hard for me to fathom. Safe to say, many have expressed feeling abandoned, forgotten, anxious, and invisible. Their appreciation for Manna just “being there” is palpable each week – Thank you for making it possible to provide a steady positive support! We’ve drawn on past years of budget surplus to help us purchase the necessary resources this year. Our grocery expenses doubled to over $93,000 while our donations were $83,000. [This doesn’t include the expenses for our van, for gas, insurance, and maintenance] Fortunately, when we purchase food wholesale from QF, we are able to increase our resource availability, and QF will often subtract a percentage of the purchase as their donation to Manna. So, for each dollar donated to Manna, QF makes it possible for us to purchase $1.30 of groceries. In other words, you get more “Bang for your Buck” by making a cash donation than you do if you donate canned food. Our hope for the coming year is twofold: first, as the pandemic recedes, people will experience a lessening sense of anxiety and a greater propensity toward self-care; and second, with greater self-care, we can include with our grocery items those that also promote self-sufficiency, like flour with baking supplies and dried beans for soups.

Poverty has a cost. The cost of poverty is witnessed physically, mentally, spiritually, materially, relationally, and environmentally. The web-site Homeless Hub [shorturl.at/kEKRU. April 4, 2022] outlines one in seven Canadians live in financial insecurity costing our health, social services, and policing services $72-84 Billion annually. The Homeless Hub also chronicles that one in five households pay more than 50% of earnings on housing. A growing number of Canadians are slipping below the poverty line, while an increasing number of seniors are facing the challenge to purchase food or medicine daily. Inflation is never a friend to those who live pay cheque to pay cheque. As summer is approaching, many BC communities worry about the arrival of “Shopping Cart People.” Some say, “It’s an eye-sore to see abandoned shopping carts piled with discarded junk and THOSE PEOPLE.” Physically they may be messy and mentally they are often handicapped or dealing with undiagnosed disabilities. These are the easily identified examples of community poverty and the solution is often to move them down the road to the next community. There is no easy solution. But, the more difficult examples of poverty that pay a heavy price by our society are hidden. Examples include: the spiritual cost of depression and anxiety resulting in an increase of suicide and overdoses in all age groups, particularly Boomers; the breakdown of relationships resulting in an increase in single family and child poverty; the inner disillusionment that leads to disregard for dropping personal trash, cigarette butts, or food wrappers. We all suffer at times from the forces that enable poverty. The answer, I believe, is not the one presented by the Homeless Hub organization and their desire for greater government intervention with supports. Yes, it takes a willing government to implement policies in keeping with the values of its citizenry, but policies will never be fully implemented and money will always be misspent. So what is really necessary are individuals willing to pause long enough to know the name of the person ‘panhandling’ beside the road, to pick up the odd piece of trash from time to time, and to connect with someone you haven’t seen for a while. For Manna, we believe our friends are important, so we seek to demonstrate the traits of value, honour, compassion, acceptance, and worth through the practice of listening to someone’s story, never judging or blaming, offering access to the resources Manna has to those we know about in our community, and asking a simple question, “How are you?” – And actually meaning it. I’m not trying to be “preachy.” We don’t need more platitudes in our life. We also can’t wait for the government to “fix it.” I’m convinced solutions begin when I think, “How can I better understand what is going on here and how to best listen to learn?”

Thank you once again to the Seaside Cruizers for their generous donation! $2000 and clothes are greatly appreciated during this holiday season.