Community Caring Camp

Anishiative works out of a commercial space on 366 McGregor, and is focused on Community Caring Camps, putting up tipis when it’s cold at Thunderbird House.

“It’s hard work and it can be challenging to provide enough capacity for those who need shelter. We don’t have dozens of staff. It’s very grassroots,” says Rylee. “Right now there’s only about five of us, so, yeah it can burn you out.”

Rylee’s partner Haley describes volunteer recruitment as having a lot of “ups and downs.”

“That’s because, with the community care camp, there are lots of people who come out for a few hours and donate stuff,” says Haley. “When Rylee started Anisihiative and was doing the walks, that was all volunteer based. We didn’t have any funding then, but we did have a ton of volunteers. But we want to honour the time that is spent. We try to give everyone some sort of compensation for their time because we think that’s important. People are willing to volunteer but we want to recognize them because a lot of the time they themselves are part of the same community.”   

Starting the Community Caring Camp during one particularly harsh winter meant that Anishiative was literally saving the lives of many homeless people. The team members were so inspired by how well this turned out that they started making plans for a project that would consist of 22 mini-homes as a possible long-term solution.