Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Chad Klassen

NON-PROFIT SERIES

STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL: A Way Home Kamloops

Jul 25, 2019 | 5:27 PM

KAMLOOPS — In the fourth instalment of our series Struggle For Survival, we look at one of the newest non-profits in the city. A Way Home Kamloops officially gained non-profit status last year. Its mission is to eradicate youth homelessness, one person at a time. A Way Home has challenges being one of the new non-profits on the block.

From the time Katherine McParland got herself off the streets and on her way to a better life, she has been striving to ensure other youth have the same second chance at life.

“I was a young person with lived expertise of homelessness,” said McParland. “I had aged out of the foster care system and realized that the existing solutions were not working for youth.”

It’s been a couple years since McParland has been working to get A Way Home Kamloops non-profit status. It started at the grassroots level.

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“I gathered a group of people that met in an abandoned building, which was very fitting for youth homelessness, and that grassroots passion grew and grew until the City of Kamloops approached us to become the steering committee behind our community plan to prevent and end youth homelessness,” she said.

The organization conducts a youth homeless count, which revealed this year that 136 kids are without a home. A Way Home Kamloops operates 20 units through its Housing First program to get youth off the streets.

Kira Cheeseborough was once homeless. Through help to get back on her feet, she now works with McParland at A Way Home Kamloops. “I experienced a lot of housing insecurity and episodic homelessness through my teens,” said Cheeseborough. “In 2015, I experienced sexual exploitation in an unsafe housing environment for about a month and a half, after which I had found temporary housing again and lost it.”

Cheeseborough says she had a mental health crisis and was admitted to Royal Inland Hospital. It’s where she was connected with McParland.

“Upon discharge, Katherine got me housed right away and welcomed me into the Rap Force Housing program that A Way Home Kamloops offers for youth,” she noted. “In there, I was in supportive housing for about a year and a half and transitioned into full independence. The unit I’m currently living in is the unit I transitioned out of.”

In the last year since A Way Home became a non-profit, McParland says it’s been a challenge fundraising and balancing the budget. The organization operates on a $355,000 annual budget to help youth. All of it is reliant on donations.

“As a new executive director, I was shocked at how much this experience related to my experience of poverty in trying to determine whether I buy milk or eggs. Simple decisions like that,” said McParland. “For us in the non-profit world, it’s ‘do we buy a thing of paper or do we take a youth to buy a light bulb so they have light?'”

Among the important fundraisers is the annual Camp Out to End Youth Homelessness. The campaign brought in $52,500 last year. In addition, A Way Home Kamloops has raised $90,000 that will go towards its Safe Suites program.

McParland says non-profit status gives the organization a leg up in the game.

“Having charitable status provides a solid foundation for A Way Home Kamloops. It allows us to issue tax receipts to the generous donors of our community that allow us to do this very important work,” she said. “It will also allow us to apply for grants and foundations. That will allow us to scale up the work we are doing on the frontlines.”

A Way Home Kamloops is in the process of apply for $160,000 of government funding for safe suites. It would be a first.

Moving forward as it begins in the non-profit world, its hope is to expand housing opportunities for youth to ensure the 136 young people that are without shelter are given a second chance at life.