A Spruce Grove, Alta., woman is taking matters into her own hands to take care of the city’s most vulnerable.
With more people falling into homelessness, Vanessa Fales is making it her mission to uplift the city’s homeless residents through her so-called ‘Connection Bus’. The project was inspired by her late brother’s life.
“The survival every day is really difficult. So if we can take that off their plate and give them a gift card for something to eat, and to be a paying customer to sit, with access to Wi-Fi, so they can move forward, that’s a big piece of what we do,” Fales said.
Fales is the community outreach coordinator with the Tri Region Pay Forward Kindness Society. The organization supports residents going through detox treatments and access housing.
Fales hosted a bottle drive and fundraiser Saturday outside the city’s Walmart, raising money to operate the bus and provide food, water, and other essential necessities for people living on the street.
“We have coffee, food, socks, warm stuff. Summertime, we have the hygiene stuff. We provide all the things that unsheltered need like bug repellent, sunblock, things that you might not think about that are a challenge for people to get,” Fales said.
Volunteers were selling 200 homemade cookies by donation, or asked shoppers passing by the store to purchase items listed on their wish list and donate to the cause.
“Currently in our community, we don’t have a shelter, or anywhere for people to go really to sit down and have a meal. We don’t have a soup kitchen or anything like that,” Fales explained.
Fales says many of the city’s homeless will build encampments near the highways just outside city limits.
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The city has a community outreach team and social services for people living rough but Fales says unless their winter emergency response is activated, there isn’t a space for them to take shelter.
“They go out there and do check-ins there. They’re quite far. It is quite dangerous but it’s the best that we have right now, there’s just really nowhere else to go,” Fales explained.
The team operates a pop-up tent program by providing temporary shelter and a sleeping bag for residents in need for the night.
“A lot of times people need to stay away from the bigger camps if they’re trying to end addiction and get into recovery. We offer this as a safe place for them to be.”
Residents must pack it up the following morning.
“Otherwise bylaw [officers] will come and take it down. We have an agreement with the outreach team that they’ll let us know if it’s left alone and we’ll come take it down”
Fales’ passion for supporting the city’s vulnerable community stems from her brother Kevin Vezina.
Vezina died in a motorcycle crash in Penticton, B.C., in 2014. Fales says he lived a troubled life and was trying to turn his life around. He was receiving help from the Gospel Mission in B.C.
“He passed away with a ticket to bed #30 to Gospel Mission and things got really dark for me,” she explained.
“Just with judgment and challenges he faced in his life when he passed away, I just wanted to do something to help people that were in his situation trying to change their life,” she added.
The organization is funded by families and local businesses living in Spruce Grove.
The bus was lent to her by Brad Mastaler, president of Computer Insights Inc., in Stony Plain. Fales says they cover the operational costs and insurance of the bus.
The bus is usually set up at Rotary Park a few evenings a week. People would often drop by to collect basic necessities or warm-up. Eventually, Fales would like to drive the bus around the city, but the operational costs are too high right now. She’s hoping the fundraiser helps support their goal of travelling through the city.
Prior to the bus, Fales turned her own personal vehicle into a makeshift crisis support van.
“We just wanted to have a safe space for people to come and kind of call home,” she said.
Fales didn’t have a specific target goal in mind for the fundraiser, but hopes it’s enough to start working towards her goals.
The bus will be used all winter to serve the unsheltered in her community.
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