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Check out the Latest Volunteering Opportunities

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Here’s what’s new from our partner organizations this week!

 

The City of Red Deer – Point in Time Count Volunteer Enumerators

The Point in Time (PIT) Count and survey serves as a snapshot in time, and is one of the tools, along with data from programs and facilities, used to analyze trends to help shape programs and services.

The PIT count takes place from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. on Tuesday, April 7. Volunteers are paired up and provided training ahead of time on the required skills for their duties. Specialized teams from housing and support agencies will visit other local areas, such as camps, on the morning of Wednesday, April 8.

The PIT count is only one tool of many to collect data that allows us to identify trends and key issues related to homelessness in Red Deer, and measure progress on CHHIP. Shelter and program data is used by policy makers, service providers and funders in planning and making changes and decisions for housing related programs and services in Red Deer. The PIT Count and Survey is funded in part by the Government of Canada’s Homelessness Partnering Strategy. For more information go to www.reddeer.ca/PITCount

Working with a partner you will be assigned to a designated area of the City. You and your partner will walk along sidewalks in your area (a detailed map will be provided). Your role is to ask everyone you encounter on the street a series of questions that will be provided to you. The survey will identify age, family status, immigration status, Indigenous ancestry, income, time spent homeless, and where people are staying – such as a shelter or outside. Training is mandatory and will be provided in advance of the actual count night.

Application form will ask if you have experience working with vulnerable populations but is not a requirement to participate.

Please register directly to www.reddeer.ca/PITCount

 

Catholic Social Services – Volunteer Your Time –  Would you like to make a difference in the lives of people we serve at CSS? With the generous gift of your time, we can create healthy and caring communities. Volunteers are valued members of the Agency Team. By lending your time, talents, and abilities to our daily activities, you enrich our ability to serve our clients with compassion and excellence.

Ronald McDonald House Charities of Alberta – Event Commitee Members – We are looking for various committee members for our signature fundraising events.

Westerner Park – Bartenders –  Bartending, pouring, serving & selling alcohol at Red Deer Rebel’s game on March 14th. Must have ProServe.

Canadian Mental Health Association – Board of Directors –   Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) – Central Alberta Region is seeking volunteers to serve on the Board of Directors of our growing and dynamic organization.  CMHA – Central Alberta Region is part of a National non-profit organization promoting community wellness, and supporting people with mental illness, acquired brain injuries, and addictions through recovery focused support, education, and advocacy.

The City of Lacombe is currently seeking to appoint community-minded citizens to serve on a variety of municipal boards and committees. Openings exist on the following:

  • Lacombe Library Board (2 vacancies) to December 2022
  • Arts Endowment Committee (2 vacancies) to December 2022
  • Art Collection Committee (1 vacancy) to December 2022
  • Affordable Housing Strategy Steering Committee (1 vacancy) to December 2021
  • Municipal Planning Commission (1 vacancy) to December 2022

 

Aspire Special Needs Resource Centre – Event Volunteers – Evening of Decadent Dessert is Aspire Special Resource Centre’s signature event. With the help of the community, the goal of raising $125,000 is within reach. Evening of Decadent Dessert will be held on Friday, May 8 at the Parkland Pavilion, Westerner Park, located at 4847 19 Street, Red Deer.

CommUNITY: Power of One Event – Various Positions – The 5th annual  CommUNITY: Power of One event is on Saturday, March 21st. Join us for an insightful conversation about racialization, radicalization and reconciliation with Keynote speakers Michael Dawe, and Tanya Schur. We need volunteers to help us with the following roles:

Red Deer Boxing Club – Bingo Workers – There are many different roles with helping at monthly Bingo’s. These are evening positions.Selling tickets, back desk, front desk, ticket seller etc.

Red Deer Boxing Club – Coaching Assistants – We are a full-service Boxing Club welcoming members who want to learn the discipline and sport of boxing, providing programs for ages 6 and older.

We require coaching assistants for our Tuesday and Thursday evening programs, 6:40-9:00 pm . Our class sizes are large and mixed ages.

 

Stay tuned to our website, social media and newsletter to catch up on all latest volunteering opportunities from our partner organizations. Visit us at volunteercentral.ca, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @VolCentral

 

 

Volunteer Central strives to build a strong, connected and engaged community through volunteerism.

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Community

SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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