Atlohsa Family Healing Services

Atlohsa Family Healing Services is an Indigenous led social service organization dedicated to assisting community members in overcoming the intergenerational trauma incurred by colonization, giving individuals the means to take control of their life and make healthy decisions.

While London has a wide-array of programs and services dedicated to addressing homelessness in the broader community, there are very few supports available to help transition our Indigenous community members from homelessness into homes.

“We rarely see our values, our principles reflected in society,” says Raymond Deleary, Executive Director of Atlohsa. “It's important for us to ensure that the programs and services that we're creating, and the initiatives that we undertake, are guided by our ways of understanding the world.”

With help from a Community Vitality Grant and in partnership with the City of London Homeless Prevention Team, Atlohsa will provide education and training on how to adapt housing-first service models to Indigenous principles.

“With an Indigenized housing-first approach, we take the concept of ‘home’ to mean something much greater than what we would typically think of – as a structure with four walls and all the amenities,” says Andrea Jibb, Director of Community Planning at Atlohsa. “We take it to mean something much broader that includes a community, nature, and family.”

This new community education initiative will be implemented as part of the Giwetashkad Indigenous Homelessness Plan, developed by Atlohsa and intended to function alongside the city’s broader homelessness plan. In effect since 2017, the Giwetashkad Indigenous Homelessness Plan began with community consultations and in 2019 was augmented by the launch of the Atlohsa Resting Space, a 10-bed shelter option for men and women who cannot access the city’s larger shelters. With plans to launch a rent stability program in 2020, the Giwetashkad Indigenous Homelessness Plan fills countless gaps in London’s social service network for not just our Indigenous population, but for everyone.

“The Indigenized housing-first model is based in an understanding of relationships. It's an approach where I, as the front-line worker, start to understand who this person is who's in front of me, and I start to understand who I am as well,” says Andrea. “So many mainstream services are based on boundaries between worker and client. An Indigenous holistic approach acknowledges the connection that is always there as human beings first.”

This system of empathy not only crosses relationship boundaries, but cultural ones as well.

“We believe that our systems of healing, that our ways of understanding the world are valid to all walks of life, to all people,” says Ray. “We know that certainly for our Indigenous community, our understanding being embedded in our culture, being founded by our culture, provides the best way of achieving that life-path healing. But that it's also inclusive to everyone – all humans should have that opportunity.”

In light of the pandemic and in the midst of limitations in service delivery and operations, COVID-19 has provided an opportunity to learn and re-prioritize for Atlohsa.

“At the height of the pandemic we had a donation of smartphones and data plans and were able to distribute these devices to people that were in need,” says Ray. “I think what we have come to realize was that during the pandemic, technology plays a really important role – and I don't think we were too efficient about the way we used technology in the past. It’s really sparked some creative thought around the most effective and efficient use of technology when we're working with people.”

While Indigenous Peoples in London are grossly over-represented in our homelessness population, the goal of Atlohsa’s initiative is not just about alleviating the issue in their own community, but sharing their perspectives and knowledge with the community at large to help propel London towards a better and brighter future.

“As a result of this project, it would be my hope and vision that the community would have a greater understanding about how Indigenous led projects and Indigenous knowledge is a viable source for supporting people experiencing homelessness,” says Andrea. “And not just Indigenous peoples, but all peoples.”

Growing Chefs! Ontario

Growing Chefs! Ontario is a charity that works to educate children and families about food by integrating learnings from the classroom with cooking activities, empowering people to develop healthy relationships with food. While Growing Chefs! Ontario is a registered charity, they don’t rely solely on donations and grants, instead operating The Beet Café, a catering social enterprise that helps fund their free educational programming. With an ever increasing demand for both their educational and catering services, Growing Chefs! Ontario has begun to outgrow their headquarters.

“We opened Growing Chefs! Ontario headquarters a few years ago and currently run a healthy school hot lunch program out of that space, while also hosting a variety of public and private events – on top of using that same space to run our education programs,” says Andrew. “The demand for our educational programming has far exceeded our capacity to deliver it in that space. And the demand for the events and even the lunch program has done the same.”

With help from a Community Vitality Grant, Growing Chefs! Ontario will construct an additional industrial teaching kitchen and greenhouse in The Grove at Western Fair District to improve on and expand the programming of their School Food Education Project, hoping to reach an additional 3,500 participants annually. The additional kitchen will also free up space at its headquarters to continue to grow and fund Growing Chefs! Ontario’s charitable operations.

“This new location in The Grove will allow us to split our social enterprise and our education program into two distinct streams, allowing both to grow and better meet the demands of our community,” says Andrew. “We'll be able to expand our programs, see more families and more kids, and provide better opportunities for members of our community to engage with our programs in a way that best suits them.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenge for Growing Chefs! Ontario as it has forced them to shut down the events portion of their social enterprise and prevented much of their in-person programming.

“We're trying to view this unfortunate situation as an opportunity,” says Andrew. “While our school system gets back on its feet and deals with their new reality, Growing Chefs is producing resources that parents can use at home to help create a healthier eating environment, and to help involve their kids in food preparation. We're also creating a series of lesson plans for teachers to use to help provide opportunities to use food as a vehicle to teach in the classroom, even when the Growing Chefs team can't be there themselves.”

Food education is vitally important to individual health, but also the health of our community. For eight years, Growing Chefs! Ontario has been changing the way our education system approaches food, allowing children and families to apply the nutritional information they gain from the classroom to their day-to-day lives.

“In 20 years, we'll know that our project is successful because you're going to see an improvement in food literacy levels across all Ontario children,” says Andrew. “We'll have a population that's more connected with our food system, has an understanding of how it works, and weighs not just the economic benefits of our food system, but also how it affects our health, how it affects the livelihood of people in our communities, and how it affects the environment.”

Food is not just a source of health and sustenance, but a vehicle for culture, a carrier of knowledge, and a common thread that links us all together socially, as humans. Growing Chefs! Ontario is actively stewarding the next generation of cooks and consumers, pursuing a healthier, and tastier, future for everyone.

“We think it’s really important for charities to have an idea on how to fund and sustain operations,” Andrew. “If you can do that while also furthering your mission, then that really just works for everybody and that's one of the ways that we hope that Growing Chefs! Ontario can be a leader.”