By Stephanie Froese

Program to help homeless fighting for sustainability

Jan 17, 2011 | 4:11 PM

The Jubilation Residential Centres and the Saskatchewan Métis Local #269 have been working alongside each other with an initiative to battle homelessness in Prince Albert.

The Homes for the Homeless pilot program, which uses community mentors to help people deal with the underlying issues of homelessness, has taken off since it started last year.

The original funding from the government allowed the program to run for 11 months.

There hasn’t been ongoing funding found yet, but the program has received enough financial help to continue for now, said John Fryters, executive director for the Jubilation Program, a partner in Homes for the Homeless Program.

“We have already actually set up the plan initially when we started out in May that we knew we needed to look at sustainability if this was going to fly and you know this program has been astoundingly successful,” he said.

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At the moment the program has enough finances to continue into the spring. Fryters said they have also received some encouraging words from the government levels to start negotiating.

“In May we received a little more than $70,000 for the homelessness partnering strategy and if we could continue to see that same amount of money for the year it would be a go.”

The Jubilation program is getting set to train a new batch of community mentors for the Homes for the Homeless Program.

“The first thing that we really need to tell people is that if you want help someone else you have to have your own life straightened out.”

Good mentors are people who are sincere, willing to make a commitment and understand that homelessness is more than just a lack of housing, Fryters said.

“Although the housing market is tight in Prince Albert we still can get people housing. We’ve proven that with this project.”

To get involved call Jubilation Residential Centres at 922-0100

sfroese@panow.com