Outreach Services

 

In every city there are those whose lives have fallen on hard times. A scripture verse in the psalms says that the boundaries of my life have fallen on pleasant places. For some of us this is true. For others the opposite has happened. At the new life mission a group of people, a social community have joined hands to provide the necessary services to reach out to assist those who could use help.

 

The new life mission is a social community that provides resources to people to assist them in accessing the services that they need in order to improve their quality of life.

 

Our focus is to provide client centred dignified assistance through resources and counsel that would see them be self directed as much as possible.

 

This is done through the many services that we provide.

 

Our Outreach services are the most visible services that we provide. The New life Missions outreach centre located at 181 West Victoria street provides many different services. Our drop in centre is open 7 days per week, which provides a place where people can have a cup of coffee and a doughnut, and play a game of cards, or visit and socialize with friends.

 

At the outreach centre many different services are provided to the community.

 

Our clothing room is always full of clothes which comes from donations of the community, and during the year, more than 1000 people will use this services and receive clothing, shoes, boots, and in the cold season a few hundred winter coats and sleeping bags and blankets.

 

Our hot lunch program serves a full course meal 6 days per week. Two weeks of the month, men are able eat at the Kamloops Christian Hostel located next door to the mission. The KCH has a provincial contract to feed and provide hostelling services to men, therefore during these two weeks, the mission only feeds women, children and seniors. The rest of the month the mission feeds everyone. The mission does not serve food on Sundays, as the city of Kamloops provides a grant to another agency to provide a meal elsewhere in the city through the Pit Stop program. Therefore rather than duplicate services, the mission fills in the gaps of services in the community.

 

The daily bread program more than 1200 boxes of baked goods through its outreach centre to the community. Everyday between 5 and 10 boxes of baked goods are given out to the community. Many people stop in everyday to access this resource.

 

The mission hosts 3 banquets per year for the poor in the community. One at Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. We've had as many as 250 attend these banquets in the past.

Our newly opened hair salon also offers haircuts and services to men, women and children. The mission has always given haircuts through volunteers in the past, but never had a place, for it, so when Genesis hair salon offered us a couple of chairs and a wash sink, we renovated an office and put in a full salon. Since then other people and businesses have donated to see the salon fully equipped and ready for service. Hair stylists from the community donate their time to provide this service.

 

The mission partners with other agencies in the city also to provide services. The mission currently provides the venue for the SHOP program which operates under the Aids Society of Kamloops. Other groups like the street outreach nurses visit our facilities weekly, groups such as Narcotics Anonymous meet regularly, and other groups will use our space for meetings in the community. We even do the odd wedding in our chapel.

 

All of these services are provided through the generous donations of the community, with no funding from any other source. In 2004 more than 3000 different people and organizations have donated to the mission to keep these outreach programs running.

 

Emergency Services are provided at the mission. Many people who are passing through town will spend time at our outreach centre. As well many locals use our services. People in crisis come through our doors daily. Many need bus tickets, food, shelter, and other help. The mission furnishes many apartments per year, provides assistance where possible financially, and provides brokering and referral services to assist men, women and children where to find help from other agencies in the community.

 

The mission also provides other emergency services for men, women and children such as our dental program. The mission started its dental program through a retired dentist who volunteered at a banquet on day. Dr. Yule saw the need to assist those who are in pain, and gathered up some dental equipment, and started providing emergency services for pain relief and infection control to the street population and also to the poor. As time went by, Dr. Peeters was coordinating the volunteer dentists, during a period when HRSDC targeted Kamloops as one of its cities that it would give money to address the issues of homelessness under its National Homelessness Initiative and created a program called Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative. Under this program the New Life mission received a grant for $32,000 that saw the dental clinic purchase a new chair, and all the tools that were needed so that teeth could be saved and fixed rather than simply pulled. This was great news for the mission and the city of Kamloops. However, there still was a need to take the dental clinic to another level.

 

Finding volunteer dentists was hard to do, and the need seemed to be growing as more awareness in the community was evident. It was at this time that Dr. Peeters had a discussion with Dr. Schweiger, who had retired from his practice in Kamloops and was willing to consider taking on the clinic. After meeting with him, it was determined that a social economy could be created by also serving friends of the mission who had dental coverage through a dental plan, and this would underwrite the cost of the clinics supplies and overhead, also then providing a resource to the community to those who had no coverage. All that was needed was another chair to make it cost effective. A miracle happened, as the very next day, Dr. Peeters received a call and was offered a full set up of another chair and equipment by the Interior Health Authority. Soon renovations began and a second chair was set up. Now the mission can provide services to the community through the social ecomony that is set up that will see the clinic continue to run for years to come. This will allow more than $30,000 per year of free or subsidized service to be provided.

 

The mission also partners with the Laubach Literacy program in providing literacy training to those who want to learn to read. This is again a recent program that has been set up at the mission. Many people in Kamloops don't know how to read. This is very difficult for them. Having a reading centre with a few computers is a great resource.

 

So as we continue to grow into different partnerships and relationships, our services in turn continue to expand. We are reminded that without the faithful support of all our donors we would not be here. So we look ahead to a promising future and are are excited to see where we will go from here.