Club President Graham Gilchrist with Michael Hrycun, YESS
This week we heard from Michael Hrycun from Youth Empowerment and Support Services (YESS). Michael told us that their mission at YESS is to walk beside traumatized youth on their journey towards healing and appropriate community integration. The youth they serve are between the ages of fifteen and twenty four and come from many different types of backgrounds. All have gone through some kind of trauma in their lives, have unstable housing and finding a meal and safe place to sleep at night is a constant worry. Many are still attending school but find it hard to stay present due to lack of sleep and constant worry about everyday survival. Trauma can affect your sense of self, safety and ability to regulate emotions. YESS has three main facilities that provide services to these young people. The Nexus Shelter on Whyte Avenue, the Armoury Resource in Old Strathcona and Supportive Community Housing.
Young people are able to drop in for a quiet place to relax or talk to others, find snacks or a meal, receive help with their school work, finding employment, medical care, transportation to appointments elsewhere, finding housing, help filing taxes and much more. Their counselling services provide help with everyday living skills, harm reduction, how to get out of traumatic situations, how to build healthy relationships and more. The Whyte Avenue facility provides stable housing, meals and support for up to fifteen young people for several months at a time to help them get back on track. The Old Strathcona location provides a drop-in facility that can handle fifty to sixty people for lunch and provides many different support and counselling services. Their supportive community housing provides spaces for another fourteen youth on a more permanent basis. Michael told us that they have provided services to seven hundred fifty-nine young people in Edmonton over the past year. Their goal is to help them each to find their own voice, get their own place, finish their education and let them make their own life.
Michael said that providing food, clothing and shelter are basic to everything they do. YESS first began as a youth shelter in Edmonton in Sept 1981 and changed their name to YESS in 2012. He said that they also collaborate with other groups helping youth in the Edmonton area. About forty percent of their funding comes from government, forty percent from fundraising and the rest from other funding through groups such as the United Way. Our Rotary club has provided funding in the past to purchase furniture and also a bus for the Old Strathcona location. We can get more information on them and making donations at email giving@yess.org. They also rely on in-kind donations of food and clothing which can be dropped off at the Bissel Centre on their behalf and they are always looking for volunteers to help with their various programs, so there are many different ways in which we can help.
We would like to thank Michael for his very interesting and inspiring talk.