People are struggling in the Okanagan, and as a local outreach team prepares for another holiday season of helping those in need, the non-profit needs all the help it can get.
All Are Family Outreach Society is a three-person operation serving people from Armstrong to Kelowna by giving them food, funds for medication, warm clothing, emotional support, and anything else they can provide. The outreach was forced to close for two weeks in both July and September due to a lack of resources and skyrocketing demand.
“It just wiped us right out,” said All Are Family co-founder Clary Lausnes, explaining the outreach team usually sees an increase of 200 to 300 per cent year over year, but saw that level of increased demand in just two months earlier this year.
The team is hoping to find more people who want to sponsor a family this Christmas, but it’s been a challenge.
“We’re actually having previous Christmas sponsors, people that sponsor families, now coming in and requesting help for themselves.”
With increased numbers of homeless seniors, families and Indigenous people in Vernon, Lausnes says the need is dire, and All Are Family has been forced to turn people away due to financial struggles.
She said families with kids are living in tents, or in RVs up forest service roads.
“Our finances are so bad that we’re even turning people away who need prescribed medication like diabetes and blood pressure, whereas normally we would help the person with that,” she said. “We’ve been so busy in survival mode that we can’t even get our head above water.”
Donations are “way down,” especially financial donations. Luckily a couple of “angelic” people ran a couple of food drives recently, allowing the outreach society to reopen.
All Are Family has three levels of Christmas sponsorship. Regular sponsors adopt another family for Christmas, getting a Christmas wish list from the family and purchasing three gifts for each child, spending a maximum of $40 per gift, and also chipping in a turkey or ham for Christmas dinner. Then they have their “rainbow sponsors,” where an outreach volunteer delivers a hamper put together buy the sponsor. Lastly, support sponsors can help out by contributing a gift card or cash, even if they can’t afford to be a regular sponsor.
The outreach team has about 15 sponsors currently, with five of them already filled with families to support.
Lausnes says the types of need in the community has remained the same: housing, bills and food.
“People are basically choosing whether they eat or whether they have a place to live.”
On homelessness in Vernon, Lausnes is tired of hearing complaints about garbage at homeless camps, saying if bylaw wasn’t forcing unhoused people to move around and allowing a tent city to exist like the one in Kelowna, it wouldn’t be a problem.
“At least Kelowna has a tent city that is stationary, they have toilets, they have a garbage dump, people aren’t being chased in and off and harassed by bylaw and the police officers, they can go there and they can stay there. But here in Vernon you have to move now, you have to have your tent up no earlier than 6 p.m. and down by 9 a.m.”
She said the problem boils down to “elected officials burying their heads in the sand.”
Lausnes says the outreach is in desperate need of children’s winter clothing — boots, coats and gloves. Financial donations are also needed.
“Food is great but if you give us $20, if we don’t have a coat, shoes, food, or someone needs medication, we can make that go a lot further.”
To support the outreach, message the team through the All Are Family Outreach Society Facebook page.
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