Downtown Eastside - Community Groups and Social Agencies

Community Groups and Social Agencies

The Ray-Cam Community Centre provides services and programs for children and families, including English as a Second Language classes, seniors programming, singing and sports opportunities, tutoring and computer stations. Another, the Strathcona Community Centre operated by the Vancouver Parks Board, offers fitness and martial arts classes, special events, a pre-school, after school care, general recreation, arts and crafts programs and free showers. The Carnegie Centre, located at Hastings and Main Streets, serves food, provides live music several times a week and offers free art sketching opportunities since the early 1980s.

The LifeSkills Centre on Cordova Street across from Oppenheimer Park offers activities such as crafts, sports and special community events and lunches. The IATSE, Local 118 puts on annual turkey dinners and clothing give-aways at the park just before Christmas. The Downtown Eastside Women's Centre at 302 Columbia St. at Cordova provides the Relocation Project/Bridge Housing aids women in need of emergency housing. The Evelyne Saller Centre, on Alexander Street, known to locals as The 44 (from a previous address on E. Cordova St.) provides low cost meals, a TV room, pool table, laundry facilities, showers and out-trips. WISH, a drop-in centre for female survival sex workers located at 330 Alexander Street, is open Sunday - Friday evenings, and offers a hot meal, showers, a literacy program, makeup, clothing and hygiene supplies, and a safe space for women to gather.

Churches such as the First United Church, one block east of Hastings and Main, Union Gospel Mission on Cordova Street, and Street Church, on Hastings St., run by the Foursquare Church, provide assistance to area residents in the forms of advocacy in dealing with welfare offices, getting health issues met, dealing with drug rehabilitation, and providing entertainment through movies and outings. First United Church has given away thousands of donated books, articles of clothing and kitchenware. The Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement on E. Cordova St., have for years provided food and clothing for area residents.

The Salvation Army Church (Cariboo Temple) sends a Soup Truck and Volunteers to hand out hot soup, hot drinks and sandwiches every Tuesday and Sunday night. Their counterparts, Vancouver 614, live in the neighbourhood and invite their neighbours into their homes for expressions of family around meals and prayer. The Salvation Army also has institutions with detox, drug rehabilitation, shelters, drop in centres, second stage housing and community services.

The Health Contact Centre on E. Hastings, in the alley, is a place where addicts and street people can go to access nurse services, information and some forms of occupational activities. Unfortunately this was closed Vancouver Coastal Health in Spring 2010 as it was felt to be a "duplication of services". A large number of the elderly population of the area used this as their primary source of medical and social contact.

The UBC Learning Exchange, sponsored by the University of British Columbia since the year 2000, opened up an outreach program at the north end of Main Street which is used by local residents to improve their education.

Pivot Legal Society is a non-profit legal advocacy organization located in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Pivot's mandate is to take a strategic approach to social change, using the law to address the root causes that undermine the quality of life of those most on the margins. Pivot's work involves addressing child welfare, addiction and health, housing, policing and prostitution.

Guru Nanak's Free Kitchen is a non-profit community organization that regularly provides thousands of meals to the needy and homeless in the area through events held in the local area such as the LifeSkills Centre and the First United Church. The concept is founded on the Sikh principles of langar (free kitchen) and seva (selfless service) developed by Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji hundreds of years ago.