Success Stories
The Untapped Strength and Talents of the Homeless Population - healing from within as a Community - Advocating professional Peer Roles - Endorsed by Data, and Research.
1. Putting Strengths before Vulnerability.
Leaders are among our Community to inspire and support others to leadership. Mentor Mentee Canada’s mentoring program models internationally successful organisations for the unwell and homeless to move them from crises to prevention and from vulnerable, marginalized and poverty level societies to not only housing but remarkable success.
What is starting in Toronto with Mentor/Mentee Canada is available for templating and duplication across Canada. We can grow an economy of Peer Leaders through all provinces adopting the Recovery Peer Support Training available to sustain wellness during employment and change. We can grow Professional Peer Employment positions through the series of Panel Discussions including Peer Value and endorsements by our leaders that Peer Support roles are an essential service that we need across multi-sectors.
Transition Projects in Portland, Oregon. Transition Projects is now in it’s 50th year as a success model for moving forward the homeless in supervised peer model mentoring.
Their broad thinking Transitions Projects is an all inclusive community of the homeless supporting one another through transition from hardship to employment, health, housing and role models in their own right as Mentors.
Mentor/Mentee Canada models this practice of inclusivity by providing educational training in a supportive and thorough Mentor Program. Transition Projects in Portland, Oregon has proven the empowerment of knowledge gained by Mentor graduates to serve and lead others through their journey from the street to success. The Mentor Program model of Mentor/Mentee Canada’s outcome is to promote independence through self-therapy and self-advocacy to self-actualized independence as our U.S. neighbours in Portland have done over the past years.
Statistic: 94% of graduates have maintained permanent housing after graduation. 71% of graduates were employed immediately after graduation. Together we can transition from band-aid solutions, emergency services and move far beyong crisis to do the same at Mentor/Mentee Canada.
Watch our first Collaborative Peer Support Video as Peer Support professionals in organizations and hospitals across Ontario spoke to the 2021 fall META:PHI Conference for Doctors, Nurses, and RAAM Clinicians to learn from us:
Video coming up here soon! Please check back shortly.
“Peer Researchers are helping to change marginalization, and Recovery of broken systems”
“Rising from being on the Streets for 30 Years, I now serve on 7 Boards of Directors in Toronto”
Lived Experienced Advocates and Professionals alongside Scientists, and on Boards of Directors are changing the face of homelessness from vulnerable to successful. Our Peer Movement alleviates the stigma of the complex homelessness and document success stories as above about survivors. Watch here for our No Longer the Past stories revealing the resilience and survival of Torontonians who have come from crisis, and risen to the top in rewarding careers - inspiring others and demonstrating the valuable and untapped talents of our vulnerable population - because vulnerable is really very powerful.
2. Rising Without Starting Over as a Refugee.
Refugees and New Comers to Canada often have the best success stories to learn from. They are models of resilience and resourcefulness, which are common characteristics of the homeless despite enormous challenges.. Refugee words “it’s a struggle” are often heard within the drop-in respite centres, shelters and transition houses of Toronto. 40% of the homeless population in past recent years have been our Refugees coming with their global experience and trauma to Canada with the promise of a better future, but only to start over from scratch in our current Social Service programs offered to them.
The barrier of lack of connections in Canada is not overcome by our employment services. Currently, a Refugee with a masters degree - or 15 years of condensed career success - is offered “a clerks position” or other step employment as the starting point in our Canadian systems.
The result is frustration and a sense that Canada is not the promised land proposed to them when they left everything behind to simply survive. Loss of self worth and dignity to a survivor of unimaginable trauma is not the Canadian Refugee Plan, but it is the struggle being met.
Peer Support itself is rooted in a First Nations approach to wellness in community through equality and story telling. Growing employment programs from our own services can speed Refugees, and all homeless, from homeless communities to success. Our cultural diversity is a cornerstone in the business and service centre of Toronto. Supporting it though employing service users promotes equality, overcoming stigma and oppression, and allows us to understand one another and importantly learn from one another.
BIPOC identified Shelter Clients, including Black and Indiginous populations far surpass other marginalized identities as service users. Growing developmental organizations begins with seeing service users faces in teams and leadership to move to inclusion and cultural safety, and erasing stigma especially in our ‘wellness’ environments, including Toronto Peer Support. Toronto’s 2021 Street Needs Assessment.
3. Investing in Education and Talent of the Vulnerable Communities.
More than 30 studies evidence that Peer Support improves the outcomes of “homelessness, arrest, incarceration, violence, and needless hospitalization.” Mentorship is recognized as a link to success in Canada. Until Mentor Mentee Canada, the affordable investment of mentoring our most vulnerable adults out of the crises we have found ourselves in 2019 in Toronto has been a missing link. Yet mentoring has proven quantitative - enabling faster results to recovery, growth and sustainability in other similar economy systems from the United States to the United Kingdom. From students and youth moving through the education system to quality employment and careers, mentoring is a proven essential model according to Statistics Canada. Mentoring is, in fact, a national government recommendation.
Unfortunately, Peer Support and Peer Mentoring has been unavailable to the homeless, the incarcerated, women experiencing violence and abuse, youth aging out of foster care causing society to pay for a system that has proven in need of a new long term solution.
The Mentor Training program from Mentor/Mentee Canada is available to former Mentee’s as comprehensive, quality training to further their skills to expand the success from vulnerable community.
We’ve had a societal crises of an overburdened service and health care system even before the pandemic. A single reintegration Councilor may be responsible for 200 individual case loads; a shelter Case Manager may state they do not have time to think, let alone have the time in the day for trauma informed care, or coordinated care.
We have international models of success in Peer Support. We have success within the national organization of Covenant House which mentors homeless youth as the leader (among more than 40 shelters in Toronto). Covenant House as a Youth shelter is an inclusive shelter with all resources within it’s doors for coordinated care, training and employment programs, and comes from a lens of deep trauma informed care.
Housing without ongoing purpose, meaningful involvement and develoment is not going to overcome poverty or oppression. Housing First is a focus, with pre and post housing community through connected learning and fianancial wellness. Peer Support training is a way to begin employment for Peers in your organization or hospital. Connect with Mentor/Mentee in 2022, and grow your Clients success stories.