THUNDER BAY - Over the last 40 years, Beendigen has helped thousands of women and children in crisis, and as it reflects on the past, going forward it is looking to expand programming to help men in crisis as well.
“I would love to have a shelter for men,” said Debra Vermette, executive director of Beendigen. “That would be the ultimate goal.”
On Tuesday, Beendigen celebrated its 40th Dinishkaa, which is an Ojibway word meaning anniversary, outside its office at Victoriaville Mall.
Beendigen provides programs and services to women and families in crisis. It offers cultural values and traditions to assist women with their mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional wellbeing. In the last 10 years alone, it has helped more than 7,500 women and 1,500 children.
“We started off as s small shelter on Syndicate Avenue and over the years we have evolved into two shelters,” Vermette said.
Since that time, Beendigen has received funding to open a 24-bed shelter, as well as open a counselling unit for women and crisis supports to help women transition from the crisis home back into the community.
In the past year, provincial funding has also allowed the Beendigen launch the Talk4Healing helpline, extending their reach even further out into the province.
“That was a big move for us,” Vermette said. “That moved out us out of the city of Thunder Bay and into Northern Ontario to be able to offer services to Indigenous women province-wide. It’s a big program and one we are very proud to have.”
And while staff and partnering organizations are celebrating the milestone, recent expansions reflect a growing need of services for women in crisis in the community.
“The need in Thunder Bay has been growing,” Vermette said. “The Indigenous population in Thunder Bay is growing at a very high rate. With that comes in all the social problems that resulted in the history that Indigenous people have come through. The programs and services are expanding because the need is there.”
Going forward, Vermette said they are looking to expand services out into the community, develop more education on the issue of human trafficking, and expand programming to include men in order to offer healing for the entire family unit.
“Celebrating 40 years is a big milestone,” she said. “We are looking forward to the next 40 because we do have the expansion of the program services. We are going to expand into offering programs and services for men and fathers so we can actually learn at healing the whole family instead of just concentrating the women and the children.”
“A lot of the time you concentrate on the women and the children and you get them ready to go out into living on their own and they end up living the same cycle,” Vermette continued. “But this way if we concentrate on the whole family, we can look at healing the whole family, which is important to the community.”
