Aspen Family and Community Network Society helps battle homelessness, poverty
If beauty is skin deep, the courage to forge a better life goes straight to the bone.
For more than 30 years, the Aspen Family and Community Network Society has helped Calgary families struggling with homelessness and poverty. The barriers to success for these families are seldom superficial – and neither is the Aspen approach.
“Our perspective is that these problems need more than a Band-Aid solution,” says Shirley Purves, Aspen’s chief executive officer. “If you need a sandwich, it’s important to make sure you’re not hungry today. But it’s also important to make sure you’re not hungry tomorrow – or homeless tomorrow.
“What we try and do is go deeper than just the exhibited need. If you need a sandwich, our team members try and figure out why you don’t have food, what’s happening at work, what’s going on in your life,” she says. “It goes below the surface. And that’s how we’re different.”
Addiction, mental health, child welfare issues, and domestic violence can all play a part in preventing a stable home environment. Through the Sustainable Families program, for families that have experienced homelessness, and the Home Stay program, for those at risk of being homeless, Aspen’s caring front-line staff work with families to help them discover the strength, the resources, and the self-sufficiency to break out of the cycle of poverty.
“We work with families to ensure they have a voice, and a choice, in the services they receive,” says Angela Clarke, a team leader with Aspen’s Sustainable Families and Home Stay programs. “Our staff work very closely with the families to set goals that are their goals.”
Enbridge has supported Aspen’s tireless work in the community for 16 years. And on Sunday afternoon, we’re celebrating one of the annual highlights of our partnership with Aspen – our Family Day at Spruce Meadows, during the North American tournament. While equestrian athletes battle for supremacy in the Enbridge Cup out in the International Ring, Aspen families will join Enbridge employees for an afternoon of family fun at one of the world’s premier show jumping facilities.
“Family Day at Spruce Meadows is a profound opportunity for the families we work with to enjoy themselves, and just be treated like everyone else. Often, they’re not,” says Purves.
Last year, Aspen’s Home Stay program prevented more than 300 families from becoming homeless, while the Sustainable Families initiative – which uses a more holistic and long-term approach – reached out to more than 140 families.
Enbridge also supports Aspen’s annual back-to-school backpack program, and a children’s Christmas party. The silent auction portion of our annual employee-driven United Way campaign, meanwhile, has raised more than $900,000 toward a special Sustainable Families emergency fund – supplying everything from work boots or a bus pass to land that construction job, to a new fridge to help support a family’s nutritional habits, to a bed for a child in a new home.
“We use these Enbridge dollars to add capacity and value to the way we work in the community,” says Purves. “It allows us to address the smaller needs that lead to the big picture of getting a job to support a family. It breaks the ‘if-only’ cycle.”
