COVENANT HOUSE PRINCIPLES
Our mission calls us to serve suffering youth on the street and to protect and
safeguard all young people. To understand the programs we provide, it is
important to understand the 5 principles that guide our services:
Immediacy – Responding to a youth’s basic needs right now
Sanctuary – Providing safety and security from the hazards of the street
Value Communication – Modeling respectful interaction; there’s no more
need to lie, cheat and steal to survive
Structure – Street life is completely unstructured; we provide the stability and
structure needed for youth to stabilize and progress toward independent living
Choice – We show youth that their life isn’t a dead end and that we will do
everything in our power to provide them with the tools needed to start a new
life as long as they work with us to meet their goals
COVENANT HOUSE VANCOUVER
• Established in September 1997 • We exist to assist youth who see living on the streets as a preferred option to what they’ve left behind (physical, emotional, sexual abuse; parents with addictions). Some have been forced from their homes • Services provided include: street outreach; drop-in centre; residential crisis shelter; semi-independent living program (collectively referred to as the Continuum of Care) |
HOW WE CAME TO VANCOUVER
• In 1995, a needs and feasibility study was conducted to determine if there was a population of homeless and runaway youth in our city • There was a significant gap in service provision for street-involved youth • There are over 10,000 runaways reported in BC each year, many of them living on Vancouver’s streets • There are between 500 and 1,000 homeless youth living on our city’s streets |