Time for Giving Thanks
Ancoura entered a new fiscal year at the beginning of September and is gearing up for an Annual General Meeting soon, when we’ll unveil 2024/2025’s invigorating strides. Spoiler alert: thanks to a few major donors we now have funds to operate, albeit within a tight budget, for the next three years.
With this assurance and moving full steam ahead, we filled the last four of five vacancies as of October 1! A warm welcome to these our latest newcomers: Emmalie in Ruby House and Nathan, Angus and Michael in Henry Farm. We hope you are settling in and getting to know your housemates and other Ancoura residents.
Having new life in Ancoura is a sure sign of good things happening. Take Roopesh, for example, who moved in last spring and eloquently summed up his Ancoura experience so far:
Living in this home is like living in a peaceful, medicinal environment. It keeps you calm and relaxed, a place where you can actually hear your own thoughts. And because you can hear your thoughts without fear or judgment, you’re able to work with your illness constructively. Instead of fighting against it, you learn to collaborate with it—so it simmers down, and you find ways to cope with everyday life.
The longer you stay here, the stronger you become. That’s the goal: to grow stronger, step by step. I’ve been in places where fear ran everything—where threats of being kicked out always hung in the air. But here, it feels different. Here, it feels like home. There is love here—and that, more than anything, is what you need.
We also made inroads to increase Ancoura’s capacity to support residents, including our second formal mental health training session for volunteers, which took place on September 6 and was conducted by consultants Lisa Boulay and Debra Moore. Attendees included two new visiting volunteers, a third year student from Carleton University doing her field placement with Ancoura, and a long-standing resident who is also a volunteer on the Board.
Volunteers are foundational to Ancoura’s model but we have ongoing challenges in rebuilding our numbers and still have houses with one or no volunteers, despite the fact that a quarter of our residents are new and in the early stages of getting to know one another. The impact is significant!
Volunteers have made it possible for Ancoura to provide a high standard of supportive housing on a low budget. They help to build trust and enhance the social and emotional connections that are vital to Ancoura’s success in fostering mental health. They contribute immensely to residents’ quality of life, whether by engaging them in a walking group, heading out to do some shopping, playing a friendly game of pool, preparing a meal for other residents, basking in the beauty of autumn leaves with a stroll in the Gatineau woods, or simply talking over joys and troubles. Their caring companionship helps residents grow and find their place in the community.
Our plan of action to increase our cohort of volunteers includes widening our outreach to attract new candidates who may be interested in helping with visiting residents, planning and holding activities, helping out with tasks, or joining a special committee or the board. We also plan to hold meet-and-greet opportunities so budding candidates can find out more about Ancoura and join existing volunteers and residents to see if volunteering at Ancoura is for them. So be sure to spread the word!
Long-term residents are beginning to show signs of the passing years—signs that touch us all but tend to show up sooner in persons living with the challenges of mental illness. Things like diabetes, heightened depression and anxiety, heart disease and memory changes. Not surprisingly, changes in the residents’ physical and mental health pose challenges for volunteers, as they too must learn to adjust and respond to issues like reduced mobility in residents, greater transportation needs, increasing spiritual needs and grief associated with the loss of family support. As these issues arise for residents, so too does the need for training, mentoring and continuing education for volunteers.
Ancoura is working with community partners to support increasingly vulnerable residents in leading fulfilled, meaningful lives in their homes within the community for as long as possible. We are grateful to the Ottawa Community Foundation who responded to these ageing related issues and granted Ancoura $23,000 to fund our proposed project entitled Challenges of Aging with Mental Illness: Empowerment through Volunteers. The project aims to support Ancoura residents in ageing with dignity in their homes by adapting volunteer recruitment and training to develop the required skills.
So, you can see that we have come a long way since our last communiqué but have a long way to go yet to ensure that Ancoura remains a haven of understanding, acceptance, and peace—or in Roopesh’s words, “a home”—for those who dwell here. Warmest thanks to volunteers, donors, and foundations who have supported us along the way and given us all hope and confidence for the future.
With best wishes to you and your family for the feast of Thanksgiving.
Ann Carmichael
President
