Community Grants
Team DTES Response sprang into action coordinating with different frontline groups to find out about their specific needs. We knew we had to get resources to the neighbourhood ASAP. The donations we are collecting go towards food, hygiene items, stipends for loss of income, and other needs that arise.
DTES SRO Collaborative
They work tirelessly to improve habitability, safety, and housing security for SRO residents. The SRO Collaborative was established to organize SRO tenants in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and Chinatown. SROs are typically small single rooms about 10×10 feet with a shared bathroom on each floor and typically without a shared kitchen. They are known to be aging, decrepit, infamously lawless and inhabitable places to live with poor maintenance and numerous health and safety code violations.
Tenant Overdose Response Organizers (TORO) – SROs have been the sites of multiple overdose deaths. Many privately-owned SROs are minimally staffed, not staffed 24 hours, or have staff who are not trained in First Aid or Overdose Response. DTES SRO Collaborative’s TOROs live in privately owned SROs and are hired to work on habitability reno-victions that cause homelessness and safety campaigns to prevent overdose deaths. This is a program managed by the DTES SRO Collaborative.
Overdose Prevention Society | OPS
Is a highly innovative & collective solution to many issues in community health, & our project represents an inspiring example of citizen action in a public health emergency. Participation in our Overdose Prevention Site educates peers in Advocacy; Community Governance; Innovative Strategies; Health Literacy; addressing health & social inequalities; facilitators & barriers for scaling up innovations; and improving health outcomes through empowerment.
Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society | WAHRS
Is a group of urban Aboriginal peoples who live, work, and play in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. They work to give their members a voice, teach advocacy, to empower the people to fight for themselves, and to educate different people about our members’ strengths and challenges.
Friends of Carnegie Community Action Project
CCAP works on housing, income, and land use issues in the Downtown Eastside. Currently Friends of CCAP is a group organizing meals, hygiene kits, and COVID-19 information flyers to residents of Oppenheimer Park and on the streets near Main and Hastings.
Muslim Care Centre
Striving to serve, share and counsel, MCC focuses on daily food distribution, addiction (drugs/alcohol), mental health and women’s counselling, chiropractic services, and daily prayer services.
PACE Society
PACE is a peer-driven organization located in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver that provides support, advocacy, and education by, with, and for current and former sex workers of all genders.
Aboriginal Front Door
AFD is a meeting place and a drop-in centre with a welcoming environment, providing opportunities to learn more about Aboriginal Peoples and Culture. When necessary, they can also offer other services, such as serving as a crisis centre, brokering long-term and specialty trauma counselling, food programs, and doing court accompaniments.
Watari Counselling and Support Services Society
Watari’s service is trauma-informed and based on an individual’s innate strengths, capabilities, and desire for wellness. They encourage an exploration and deeper understanding of self and community, so that people can make informed choices.
SPIRIT
SPIRIT |Society of Pillars or Individuals Receiving Involuntary Treatment engages in advocacy, knowledge sharing, and evidence-based practice to dismantle oppression in our mental health system and create new systems of healing. A Registered Nurse who is providing wound care to those on the street and partnering with a clinician to provide antibiotics for treatment on the spot in order to keep people out of Emergency Rooms. She also works with peers to distribute food and health and safety supplies to the unhoused and precariously housed.
La Boussole
Créé en 1992, La Boussole, centre communautaire d’accueil crée des liens sociaux dans la diversité, et soutient les francophones du Grand Vancouver à s’épanouir dans leur milieu de vie.
Created in 1992, La Boussole, a community reception center creates social ties in diversity, and supports Francophones in Greater Vancouver to thrive in their living environment.
Raise the Rates
Is a coalition of community groups and organizations concerned with the level of poverty and homelessness in British Columbia. They have been campaigning for 10 years for a systemic solution to poverty: raising welfare and disability rates in BC.
Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users | VANDU
is a group of users and former users who work to improve the lives of people who use illicit drugs through user-based peer support and education.
Coalition of Peers Dismantling the Drug War
They are a collection of people who use drugs and their allies, with the collective goal of establishing a safe supply for both opiate and stimulant users. Their primary goal is to provide a low barrier safe supply that is not medicalized and available to all. Secondarily, they are concerned with improving health outcomes from drug users across the province and country.
Vancouver Aboriginal Policing Community Society
It was created to address social justice issues, improve safety for Aboriginal people and build the relationship between the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) and the Aboriginal community through education, awareness and open dialogue.
If you are a frontline DTES group needing assistance please reach out to wecare[at]dtesrepsonse.ca.
To read about the Community Projects we fund, go here.