The University of British Columbia has a drop-in centre downtown in Vancouver's East side known as the Learning Exchange where it provides educational opportunities to folks who live and function in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and other inner-city communities.
Vancouver's Downtown East Side is an inner city neighbourhood that has been experiencing challenges with drug addiction and prostitution for lots of years. The region consists of a number of diverse neighbourhoods, including Strathcona, Chinatown, and Gastown, as well as the central location around Major and Hastings. The Downtown Eastside is at present facing significant social, economic and well being-related problems. Although there are undeniable troubles, the community also has significant strengths. And, essential community-building function is being undertaken and some of this very important work is performed by the UBC Studying Exchange.
The Understanding Exchange offers opportunities for UBC students to develop an understanding of society through very first-hand volunteer function and promotes the formation of partnerships among individuals at UBC and consumers in the Downtown East Side and other inner-city communities that make the sharing of expertise and resources attainable. The program started particularly small and still has a extremely tight budget, but at this time alot more than 800 UBC students volunteer here in a range of community assistance groups.
10 individuals from the Servas conference went downtown to participate in a learning knowledge involving a self-guided tour, and our young neighborhood professional Francy spent about 90 minutes with us, exploring what we knew or had heard about the neighbourhood, the several media stereotypes, what sort of people today lived there and why and what was becoming carried out to help this community.
We learned that the community is truly rather diverse, not only does it incorporate men and women dealing and employing drugs as well as sex trade workers, the area also houses new immigrants, social service personnel, artists and students. Even seniors and families live here and in 1 coop housing project, built about a central courtyard, the single and older many people live on the outside of the complex to give protection, although the families with young kids live on the inside so the young ones can play safely in the courtyard .
The Downtown East Side is one of the couple of areas in Vancouver that still has cost-effective housing prices. We identified out that a large number of of the individuals in the location take on short-term or transient kind of work assignments in labour pools, and a number of of them function as "binners", collecting metal cans and glass bottles from garbage containers which then get reclaimed in neighborhood recycling facilities. In Vancouver the sight of persons going via garbage bins is extremely standard, even in the pristine suburban campus of UBC, and this activity is also referred to as "dumpster-diving". We realized that these persons perform an fundamental societal service by diverting recyclable materials away from the landfills back into reprocessing facilities.
The most important drugs represented in this area are heroine, crack and crystal meth, and Francy explained that lots of of the area's inhabitants live extremely nocturnal lives and that the mornings can be fairly quiet. After exploring the socio-economic background of this neighbourhood we were given a safety briefing which included practical suggestions such as treating consumers respectfully and seeking them in the eye, even if they are requesting dollars from you, politely declining if an individual mistakes you for a sex-trade worker, keeping valuables out of sight and similar problems. I decided to leave my whole purse and camera at the drop-in centre as did many other members of our group.
We then headed off in small, inconspicuous groups of three or 4 people, with a modest unobtrusive map. The map pointed out nearby sights such as buildings, housing coops, community centres, churches and parks. The initial thing we did was we headed north out to the bridge at the top of Major Street from where you have a gorgeous view of downtown Vancouver, such as Canada Place. It strikes you as ironic, how so significantly beauty and opulence can be situated appropriate next to an location with immense economic and social troubles.
We headed west on Alexander Street and promptly arrived on a gorgeous small square that is component of Vancouver's historic restored Gastown location. From there we headed south along streets like Pender and Carrall, several of which have boarded up most important floors, and former retail areas that had been closed a long time ago. Occasionally you see neighborhood homeless men and women and at 1 developing we saw two young men and women on a couch in front of a building, and beside them a young woman who was stretching and contorting her body in strange methods. We had been later explained that this woman was quite possibly coming down from taking drugs the night before and was experiencing excruciating discomfort in the process.
We snaked our way by way of the neighbourhood past a variety of parks that according to our guide book had been described as gathering spots for drug activity in the course of the night. Most of these areas were fairly empty, but we did pass a number of people today whose appearances had been ravaged by years of drug use. On Pender Street we passed by an astounding developing, the Sun Tower, built in 1912, that housed the offices of The Vancouver Sun newspaper from 1924 to1964 and is crowned by a by a 3-story beaux arts copper roof.
Pender Street took us further east towards Vancouver's Chinatown, which compared to the chaotic hustle and bustle of Toronto's Chinatown, seemed really orderly and organized. Our map told us to make a brief detour into the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, opened in 1986, the first full-size authentic Chinese garden built outside of China. From there we went through a mixed neighbourhood with a assortment of Chinese or Korean community centres and seniors residences. We also passed by a community centre that provided totally free showers, World-wide-web access, mailbox and numerous other services to quite a few of the homeless consumers in this area. Lots of of the neighborhood churches present shelter and other services to this community in have to have.
1 especially haunting image for me was a especially young woman, maybe in her late teens, early twenties. She had bleached blond hair, blue eyes and dark rims of smeared mascara under her eyes. She was leaning into the recesses of a constructing and had clearly been crying. Some thing was in her hand, but I was unable to see what it was. She appeared to be in a superb deal of physical and emotional discomfort, and her face was still so young and pristine. I thought how powerfully addictions have an effect on consumers and how complicated it have to be to extricate oneself from this way of life.
My two walking partners commented on a different older woman, whose face had been scarred and they commented that the blank appear in her eyes was a really haunting expertise. Since I was in charge of figuring out the map I did not see this individual, but the ravages of drug use had been plainly obvious in so countless of the residents' faces. Ironically enough, as we had been seeking at our map, we had been asked twice by different men and women if we had been lost and if they could assist redirect us. We had been prepared for becoming accosted and asked for dollars, and instead we had been provided some assist by the locals - ironic indeed.
Right after we completed our walk we headed back to the UBC Learning Exchange for a debriefing and we shared our experiences. We noted that the neighbourhood was much extra mixed and less consistently run down than we had expected. A comment was also produced that comparatively couple of many people had been on the streets and that we didn't witness any drug-related or sex-trade transactions at this time of day. Overall it had felt really safe for us 3 girls to walk by means of this neighbourhood, and throughout morning hours this region didn't look all that various from other urban neighbourhoods.
Our understanding knowledge was capped off by a check out at the Carnegie Community Centre, built in 1908 as a Public Library. The Carnegie Centre provides a range of social, recreational and educational programs for the residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. It is usually described as the community's living room--a location where people today can come to participate in programs or to merely relax and socialize with others, especially important given that several of them live in one-room dwellings where they don't have the luxury of a living room to relax in.
The Carnegie Centre offers a variety of facilities: a Public Library reading room, a seniors centre, weight room, a learning/literacy centre, a kitchen that delivers 3 nutritional meals a day, an art gallery, an auditorium and gym as well as a dark room and pottery room. Our group did indeed sample the Carnegie's cuisine, and I had a vegetarian lunch with veggie spring rolls, salad and rice, as properly as 1 of the most delicious mushroom soups I have ever eaten. Together with a lemon pop this lunch came to $three.40.
The meal was delicious and completing this understanding encounter in Vancouver's Downtown East Side really enriched my understanding of the city and this neighbourhood, and I gained a real appreciation for the efforts of the countless hundreds of persons who try to bring about positive change in this location. Francy indeed summarized it succinctly: the finest way to make a distinction is via individual engagement, and the modest efforts of many can bring about huge change to the community as a entire.
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