Hi. I'm Bernie. Co-founder of Last House on The Block Society. My formal title is President. I am also the webmaster and blog editor so most of the posts at this blog come from me. I have a bunch of other little jobs at the Society. That's how volunteering works. We do a bunch of things for the place we volunteer for and nobody really knows who does it.
I was just sitting here at home, knitting a scarf for our project. I just recently learned how to knit. I learned at the Knitting Group we have at the Take Action Society. Some of my male friends think it isn't very manly of me, but oh well, I'm not overly concerned with how other people view what I do. Besides, I think I could become very proficient at this. I have only been knitting for 2 weeks and already I have the makings of a scarf that is good enough for our project.
And what is our project exactly? We are a community outreach for persons in recovery from addictions, abuse, or homelessness. The key phrase there is "in recovery from". Way back then when we first started this project, it was suggested that we address the issue of homelessness because we were dealing with alcoholics and addicts and a lot of them suffer from homelessness. A lot of them have situations of abuse that they are dealing with. And mental illness is often a co-occurring disorder. So there is a lot of crossover involved.
If you're walking down a street in Halifax and you see someone panhandling for spare change, you don't really know how they arrived at this point in their life. You also do not know how sincere they are in their efforts to become a productive member of society. Some want to be helped, but would prefer not to be branded as homeless. So, knowing who to give our gifts to, became a dilemma.
We decided that the best way to help those who wanted help was to donate our gifts to organizations that deal one on one with these issues and let the organizations determine who receives the gifts. So that's what we do. In the first few weeks of December we donate our gifts to community groups and organizations in Halifax and Dartmouth. This year there are 18 organizations on our list. In this way, we can assist these individuals without drawing attention to the fact that they have problems of addiction, abuse, or homelessness. It preserves their anonymity and therefore their dignity. As a recovered alcoholic and former homeless person, I understand how important that is.
So, I have no idea who will receive this scarf I'm knitting today. It might be someone who lives in a transition house for addicts. It might be a sex trade worker who popped into the Stepping Stone community center. It might be someone dealing with a mental illness who attends Laing House. It might be someone who was homeless last month but is now living in a supervised building. Maybe someone who attends the Direction 180 mobile methadone clinic or someone who goes to Brunswick Street Mission for a hot meal. I won't know. But I will know that I helped someone by taking a little time out of my busy day to knit a few rows of yarn together.
We have 15-20 volunteer knitters involved in our Santa Under The Bridge project.
