With increased demand this winter, health and wellness services gathered under one roof this week to help share the workload.
The Mission Friendship Centre outreach team hosted a Community Wellness Connect event at its purple door on Railway Avenue Thursday afternoon (Jan. 30).
The event featured free lunch, prizes, giveaways, craft workshops, and booths for various services and organizations.
“This winter's been fairly hard on our people. With the combination of weather and the closure of the Diamond Head, we've seen an increase in at-risk and unhoused populations and folks coming to access our services,” Mission Friendship Centre executive director Dawn Styran said.
“So we figured we would get all of the service providers together under one roof so that we can show that we're working collaboratively with our community partners.”
Organizations with booths at the event included the Mission Overdose Community Action Team, Mission Literacy in Motion, Fraser Health, IHART, First Nations Health Authority, Binary Freedom Foundation, Union Gospel Mission, Centennial Place, and the province’s Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction.
Despite the increase in numbers, Styran says the Friendship Centre isn’t the only service provider that can do the same work.
“If we bring everybody together more often and more frequently, then we can share resources, but also share the workload because other service providers have specializations and if our communities don't know what's being offered, they are not going to access it,” Styran said.
The purple door, which launched in August 2024, offers a breakfast program twice a week, and showers five days a week. During the winter, it also provides essential items for unhoused individuals including winter wear, blankets and hand warmers.
Another "Community Wellness Connect" event is expected in early March, highlighting the changing needs for the community as the seasons change.