It’s 7:56 am, I just left the house with no makeup, no glasses and a mis-matched bag. Dave and I were in a daze, a fog and everything felt surreal.
The night before, we pitched CMNGD (COMMONGOOD) to hundreds of entrepreneurs, risk takers and dreamers… including Mayor Nenshi for ATB’s Alberta BoostR Pitch Event. There was a moment during the pitch where Dave says:
“Over the next year we will employ the homeless for 10,000 hours at a living wage.”
The audience erupted in applause! My heart jumped out of my chest, the response to the CMNGD story was overwhelmingly positive.
We were on a high of excitement after winning the pitch competition, we could barely sleep. The next day we had a meeting with our partner the Calgary Drop-in & Rehab Centre (The DI). I took a deep breath, left my mis-matched purse in the car and walked into the shelter.
As we walked through the lobby of the DI, there was a man yelling at a wall, rocking himself back and forth while eating. Tears began to run down my face, he was clearly mentally ill yet here he was in a homeless shelter, not a hospital or getting the medication he needed.
“It was a sobering moment: 12 hours after winning the pitch competition, there was living proof that there’s still so much more left to do as our most vulnerable are still on our streets.”
The DI is doing amazing work within a system, in my opinion, that is broken. I am humbled by how they truly treat each person who walk through those doors with kindness and dignity. We know that homelessness is a complicated and layered issue. It is not only people with mental illness, there are many different reasons and misconceptions about how or why someone becomes homeless.
CMNGD will not be able to address all the areas of homelessness through employment but we do want to be a spoke in the wheel of the many people and organizations who are working towards innovative solutions.
We are in the final days of our campaign to raise $10,000 so that we can make CMNGD fully operational. Every $20 you give ends another hour of homelessness on our streets and gives someone a chance to become sustainable.
When you give to our campaign, you also get a reward.
Thank you for your support, we feel honoured to have the community partnered with us on this journey. With your support we will employ 10,000 hours in the next year and a total of 310,000 hours across Canada in the next 5 years.
