Getting a boost

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/12/2015 (3309 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If the Winnipeg Boldness Project has a poster girl, it’s Wendy Hallgrimson.

The 32-year-old Point Douglas resident has been involved with the project since before it even officially started. She was pregnant with her son, Lindal, when she heard about the initiative, which aims to improve outcomes for young children in the Point Douglas area by working with members of that community.

Hallgrimson was sobered by the statistics. Her neighbourhood — the neighbourhood she and her partner, James Zebrasky, grew up in and continue to call home today — has the dubious distinction of leading the country in terms of poverty, poor health and educational outcomes, violent crime, as well as drug and alcohol abuse. And many of the children in this neighbourhood are already at an unfair disadvantage the moment they are born.

Sixty per cent of children in Point Douglas are starting school at a point where they are ready to learn. The other 40 per cent, owing to a variety of interconnected socio-economic factors, are already behind. This can have lasting effects well into adulthood.

That’s where the Winnipeg Boldness Project comes in. Since the seven-year initiative officially launched in January 2014, the team has been working hard toward its three main objectives: to create a six-year early-childhood development intervention strategy, to create a “strength-based narrative” for the North End, and to draw on both the wisdom of the community’s residents as well as indigenous knowledge to draft a model for Best Practices for Raising Children that puts the child at the centre.

The ultimate goal? To improve the lives of Point Douglas residents.

Lindal is about to turn two and, come May, he’ll be a big brother. As he’s growing, learning and reaching his own developmental milestones, so, too, is the team that will help his community realize its potential.

 

Research and development

“We get a lot of, ‘Boldness, yay! — wait, what is it again?’ ” project manager Diane Roussin says with a laugh.

We are in the Winnipeg Boldness Project’s Jarvis Avenue headquarters. Outside, it’s a slate-grey November afternoon, but inside, little explosions of colour brighten up the floor-to-ceiling whiteboards. The workspace is quite literally wallpapered in ideas.

We are joking about the fact there’s no tidy definition of what exactly the Winnipeg Boldness Project does — mainly because what it does is so new.

“It’s very learning-based, which makes it a bit risky,” Roussin says. “We’ve been learning a lot. And then, trying to explain and articulate to others what we’ve learned is challenging. Because people want ‘the Plan.’ They want the surefire.”

The work Boldness is doing is emergent, which is a big reason it was recently tapped to present some of its findings at the inaugural Indigenous Innovation Summit, a national gathering that took place Nov. 18 to 20 at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

“I always say, to cut to the simplest version, we’re research and development,” Roussin says. “We’re not delivering a service here. We’re trying to demonstrate some of these promising practices — and some of these best practices — and put some evidence and data around it. We know we’re here for a limited amount of time. We’re here to show and prove some things, and we’re here to hold that up to and for larger systems. We’re here for system change — and we’re going for high-hanging fruit.”

The project recognizes real systemic change requires radical shifts at the top. As the projects founders wrote in the Free Press in 2014, “There are solutions to what ails Point Douglas children and families, many of which exist in the community itself, but typically they aren’t valued, or in some cases are hidden from view by a system that has turned Point Douglas citizens into clients and views them not as assets to be strengthened but as problems to be contained.”

So rather than come in and tell a community what it needs based on, say, traditional research models or programs that have been successful elsewhere, the Winnipeg Boldness Project is informed and shaped by the community itself. Point Douglas residents are the ones who are driving the ideas and sharing their wisdom. They are the ones telling the Boldness team what works and what doesn’t, the barriers they face and the gaps that need filling.

(The Winnipeg Boldness Project defines Point Douglas as the area east of McPhillips Street to the Red River and north of the CPR railyard to Carruthers Avenue.)

Education, health care, transportation, nutrition — these are all things that directly impact the well-being of children and families. Healthy communities begin with healthy kids.

“The success of the first year was about relationship-building — bringing together groups and families to define a common vision,” says Gladys Rowe, research manager for Boldness. “Opportunities for children to achieve success and well-being as defined by those children and families. We really tried to listen to all the voices who were sharing their challenges, strengths and ideas.”

As well, the Boldness team has developed partnerships — philanthropic, corporate and community organizations that will be able to meet those wants and needs. In addition to the six-member team that works in the Jarvis office, the Winnipeg Boldness Project’s team also includes a Stewardship Group composed of many leaders in both the non-profit and business communities, several Guide Groups, a Partnership Table, as well as nearly 40 funders and community/business partners.

“Bringing all these sectors together on an ongoing basis is a huge part of this project. It’s leading to really strong collaboration and strategies,” Roussin says.

During the “discovery phase” of the project, data about the neighbourhood and its residents were collected, in large part, by community members themselves, via interviews, sharing circles and short surveys.

Shannon Meaniss is an active member of the Parent Guide Group. She loves being a part of it. “I get to speak for the community,” she says.

Meaniss has four daughters — 15, 10, nine and seven — as well as a two-year-old boy. She grew up in Point Douglas and has been reminded how close-knit the community is through her work with Boldness. Like other parents in Point Douglas, she has concerns about safety.

“The gangs. The street drugs. Those are major challenges,” she says.

But they don’t define her neighbourhood. “It’s not a scary neighbourhood,” she says. Its residents are no different than anyone else. “We’re all getting our children off to school, making the best for them, making our ends meet.”

Roussin adds: “People in Point Douglas are looking out for each other. They’re looking out for each other’s kids. People know what they need or want.”

The Winnipeg Boldness Project’s job is to harness that knowledge so community organizations can use it to create stronger programs and services.

 

‘Proofs of possibilities’

Through its preliminary research, the Winnipeg Boldness Project identified five main areas to work on, or what it calls proofs of possibilities. They include the Canada Learning Bond, family-centred decision-making, supports for dads, the Hub of Strength (which focuses on early-childhood development training) and transportation.

The Canada Learning Bond is a great example of a gap that can be closed in Point Douglas. The Canada Learning Bond is a federal program that helps parents get a jump on saving for their children’s post-secondary education in the form of a registered education savings plan (RESP).

In the Point Douglas area alone, only 2,500 of the 10,900 eligible children are benefiting from this program. By addressing some of the barriers to applying — lack of ID, an intimidating application process — the Winnipeg Boldness Project can help Point Douglas parents start saving for their child’s education.

Suddenly, post-secondary education looks less like an unattainable dream and more like a reality. The children win, but so does the community as a whole.

Another important facet of the Winnipeg Boldness Project is smashing the stubborn, pernicious stereotypes that continue to plague Point Douglas. That it’s a place to be avoided. That it’s a place where only bad things happen.

Over the past year, the community has been participating in two important public art projects.

The first, unveiled last November, was a photo project titled Through My Own Eyes: A Visual Narrative of Life in the North End. Residents were given cameras and asked to document their lives in the neighbourhood, capturing the people, places and things that are most important to them. The project toured around the city, displayed at United Way Winnipeg, the Millennium Library, the University of Manitoba and the legislature.

The second, which took place over the summer, was a mosaic art piece in the shape of Point Douglas, created from tiles contributed by everyone from residents to police officers and provincial ministers.

Each contributor was asked to answer one question: “What is the most important contributing factor to the success of families living in Point Douglas?” Overwhelmingly, “love” was the answer.

 

‘Laughter is the answer’

That point is echoed again on a night in late November. The Parent Guide Group has convened at Winnipeg Boldness Project’s Jarvis office for a meeting. Stew, bannock and blueberry pie are served.

The meeting officially opens with a smudging, followed by an icebreaker game in which we must, as a group, keep an impossible number of stuffed animals off the floor by tossing them to one another. “No matter how much you have on your plate, laughter is the answer,” Rowe says.

Kara Passey, one of the project’s research assistants, then facilitates an activity in which the group chooses images from a wall that represent what they think makes a healthy relationship. Common themes of love, family, friendship, community and tradition emerge. It’s a brainstorming session for the next Boldness community art project, which will be the creation of a star blanket.

Hallgrimson is in attendance that night, as are Karen Lahey, 32, and Martiza Martinez, 35, two other Point Douglas parents. Both women are there because of Hallgrimson. Lahey is a mom to a two-year-old boy; Martinez has two girls, a 16-year-old and a one-year-old.

All three women say the parent group has been invaluable for learning about what resources exist in their community and how they can make their community better.

All three women are concerned about safety in the area.

“I live close to Main Street — Austin and Euclid,” Martinez says. “I think they should shut down the Main Street bars. It’s so close to where people live. It’s harder for your kids to go outside and play because there are drunk people at all times of day.”

She says North Main is just, “Pharmacy, doctor, bar. Pharmacy, doctor, bar.”

“It’s what your children see,” Lahey adds. “I mean, you can’t not see homeless people — the world isn’t perfect, and that’s reality. But it’s hard to explain to them. And they’re very impressionable.”

Still, it’s not “all drugs and gangs,” as Hallgrimson puts it. She’s proud to be from Point Douglas. She wants her children to be proud of it as well.

When asked if the Winnipeg Boldness Project makes her hopeful for the future of her community, she answers immediately.

“You know what? It does,” she says. “I feel hopeful for my children and all the kids of Point Douglas. When I first started, it was a three- to five-year research project. I think when Lindal hits school, they’ll have enough research done, and the statistics we learned at the beginning will improve.”

 

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti