BLOG

Wednesday night team on the first snowy night of the season. When OIM staff pack up for the day and lock the doors at 4pm, we know that...

It was a particularly rough start to the night at Innercity Arts. One of the youth had arrived in distress, suffering from a mental...

I make a quick stop at a local fast food restaurant for some food and meet a homeless gentleman at the door. He is panhandling, which is...

As we near the 10th anniversary of Innercity Arts, I wanted to look back on how the program came about. I recently spoke with Jason Pino,...

Larissa’s Journey is a blog series that we hope will offer insight and understanding into the lives of one of the young people in the...

Life is like that at times and people somehow seem to end up in the dark recesses of memory and disappear behind the urgency of the lives...

The whole night went by and we handed out the usual: sandwiches, socks, juice boxes. Finally, as we were ending our shift, one of the...

When someone from the street experiences loss, their own isolation and marginalization is often compounded with the question: Does anyone...

And yet, they are all there with the same message: “I want your attention.” The reward in the discovery of a “blur” is like a box waiting...

On a recent family vacation to BC, we witnessed polite but dishevelled panhandlers plying their trade amidst the more decidedly destitute...

I want to share a short, but quite wonderful, blessing I received from my street-engaged friend named ‘Bob.’ When you are on the streets,...

“I’ve been on my own a long time. I left home when I was 10. Been on my own ever since.” Edward told me this as we sat together in the...

Some seem helpless and solely dependent upon one or more of the many institutions, like Ottawa Innercity Ministries (OIM), whose support...

Our Christmas Story this year took us on a journey with Kurk, a homeless Vet, who lost everything. We walked alongside him as he tried to...

Despite these dark – and unimaginable – circumstances, Frankl emerged still holding onto hope. His rationale, as he explains in the book,...

I see it each Sunday night in the stylish clothes some people wear or the cars others don’t have. It’s visible in their health or...

You see her every day on your way to work. Usually she is sitting at Tim Horton’s or resting on a bench. She is hard to miss – a small...

Later that evening, my young street outreach partner and I met 52 street friends. They represented all facets of this diverse culture;...

But it is the mundane, the everyday events, that can have the biggest impact. My role at the drop-in is that of a greeter. Some say it is...

It happened as I got on the bus & looked around for an empty spot. “There she is!” I heard someone say. It was Ted. He was sitting alone....