BeTheChangeYYC Hosts Its First Pop-Up Care Village in Calgary, Canada
September 17, 2022
BeTheChangeYYC brings essential care services to the streets of Calgary, Canada
Backstory
BeTheChangeYYC is a grassroots initiative founded by Chaz Smith in 2015 that became an official non-profit organization in May 2018. Chaz experienced homelessness himself from 2005 until 2008 and says it was those three years that fueled his motivation for creating BeTheChangeYYC and supporting people with its street outreach. The team realized that Calgary’s homelessness resources were scattered around the city, and not easily accessible. And when Bill Zheng joined the organization in 2021 as a volunteer, he took his past knowledge of our Pop-Up Care Village model and pitched to the organization as a viable way to bring these critical resources closer together.
How LavaMaeˣ Helped
Bill Zheng and Hanna Woodward, the BeTheChangeYYC Volunteer Pop-Up Care Village Coordinators, joined our 1:1 Mentorship program in April 2022 and worked with our Program Consultant Sam Reardon to make the event a reality. Sam met with the team frequently over the next few months, working with them both on event design and logistics, volunteer recruitment strategy, service partnership development, program material needs, and overall project management.
Sam also supported with permitting application reviews, safety protocol development, and media relations. Our Pop-Up Care Village Toolkit and Public Relations Toolkit were also used in conjunction with Sam’s consulting.
Impact & Results
The Pop-Up Care Village was hosted in September 2022 at Olympic Plaza, a centrally located public space that's often used for special events and festivals. The Pop-Up Care Village offered clothing, hygiene products, haircuts, manicures, massage therapy, medical aid, housing aid, employment aid, low-income transit applications, mental health aid, and indigenous drumming/free-rap entertainment.
Guests served: 600
Partners activated: 27
Volunteers recruited: 50
The Pop-Up Care Village garnered significant media attention via Global News, CTV News Calgary, Live Wire Calgary, and The Gauntlet.
Bill, Hanna, and Sam are also already planning for a second Pop-Up Care Village in early 2023.
Signature Stories
“There was one person who I had massaged and when they got up a few tears just fell out of his face like it was leaking and when I went to clean the table I wiped a legit puddle of tears.”
~ Jacob, Message Therapy Service Partner
“The indigenous drumming and entertainment was honestly the glue of the whole event, people were laughing, dancing, singing, rapping, and everybody cheered our grassroot partner Sobercrew on to keep on drumming!”
~ Bill Zheng, BeTheChange YYC Volunteer
