A local homeless outreach agency is hoping that the winds of winter will lead to a change in the hearts of Surreyites who are able to give to those less fortunate.
Jonquil Hallgate, executive director at Surrey Urban Mission, says the agency is leading the national Coldest Night of the Year walk in Surrey - to be held Saturday, Feb. 21 - with the aim to raise funds to better serve the homeless and people in poverty.
"The (Surrey Urban) mission is an extreme weather site and we accommodate 60 people overnight when the shelter's open. And that's a fairly large contribution in the city because most of the other sites have 10 or 15 spaces so we are sort of the backup for the fact that there's no winter shelter," said Hallgate, referring to Surrey's failure to find a permanent shelter in the city for the second year in a row.
The fundraising goal for this year is $100,000 for the projected budgetary needs of the mission, as well as meeting their future outreach goals.
A critical component of those goals includes raising enough money to hire full-time outreach workers for the mission, said Hallgate. Currently, the organization relies solely upon the free time of volunteers in the community and can't always follow up on the referrals they make to other agencies.
"Right now, if somebody comes in and says, 'I want to get housed,' or 'I want to get into recovery,' (volunteers) are trying to help make those connections. But people have other lives and they're not here 40 hours a week," explained Hallgate.
After more than a decade of operating out of a shared building on 104th Avenue, Surrey Urban Mission moved into their own digs at King George Boulevard and 108th Avenue in June of 2013, thanks to a donation of $1 million from the BC Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and Christ the King Lutheran Church.
Bosa Properties Foundation funded the installation of a commercial kitchen that enabled the mission to serve 80,000 meals in 2014.
Hallgate said with enough funding from this year's walk, they would like to hire a chef to run a free commercial cooking program in the kitchen that would provide 12 people in poverty with the skills they need to get a job in the food services industry.
"So we have all of these lofty goals about how we see we can make a difference and a lot of that is by getting rid of the barriers that preclude those living in poverty from participation."
The Coldest Night of the Year walk starts at 5 p.m. in participating communities across Canada and is composed of a two-kilometre, fivekilometre, and 10-kilometre walk. The walk starts at the mission and heads up 132nd Avenue to Holland Park and then circles back.
The mission is currently looking for volunteers and captains for each team, as well as corporate or individual sponsors.
Hallgate said there are a myriad of ways people can help out even if they don't have the money to donate. They can still volunteer or help organize a team.
For more information about the walk visit Coldestnightoftheyear.org.
This year, Coldest Night of the Year walks will also be held Feb. 21 in Cloverdale (with the start/finish at Cloverdale Community Kitchen at Pacific Community Church, 5337 180th St.) and White Rock (at Sources Community Resources Centre, 882 Maple St.).