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Celebrating Participant Success
The following success stories show the impact that asset building programs can have on an individual's journey towards self-sufficiency.
As the first year of the FUTURE FOUNDATIONS program comes to a close I reflect on the ways that it has changed my life, and I am awed by the sense of hope and promise it has provided for me. It has been a great year of informative workshops, networking, and building connections in the community.
When I first started, I almost felt like the program was too good to be true. As far as I know, there is no other savings program that even comes close to the return we will see from Future Foundations. The closer I get to my goal of home ownership, though, the more exciting this gets. Not only is it a medium to achieve such an incredible goal (I am a previously single parent, I live on a low income, and have struggled to get an education on my own) but also it has helped me tremendously in the meantime.
The MCC facilitator, James Seibert, is a wonderful, caring man and he is a great role model for lifelong learning and engaging in community development. Van City Savings, one of the funders, has also changed my life. I switched all of my banking over to them, and I have been impressed over and over again by their desire to help members like myself to achieve their goals. I am no longer labeled a single parent and treated as such in the financial realm. All of the possibilities they offer have been open to me, and that's a wonderful feeling.
I can't say enough good things about this program. It has given me so much hope for the future. My education is in social work, and I would love to some day be a part in facilitating such an excellent, rewarding community development project that truly does work for the participants to enable them to be confident, contributing members of society.
To read more Future Foundation Success Stories, please click here.
"Empowered"
Approximately two years ago I arrived home one day to find a letter of invitation from the Family Self-Sufficiency Project. I knew that this project would change my life. At the time, I was a 24 year old single mother of two young daughters, then one and two. I had recently left an abusive relationship and was trying to get my life back on track. I never imagined myself being in the situation that I was in. I had never believed that I would be unable to provide for my children, that the food bank would be our provider of food. Never before had I faced the insurmountable hardship that I was currently facing.
I grew up in a good home, was university educated but I was suddenly faced with an immense sense of hopelessness brought about by my change in circumstances. By the time I entered the Victoria FSS program, I had returned to school to upgrade my skills. The project provided me with the tools I needed to change the situation I was in. Gradually I came to see that things could be different.
The program empowered me to change my life. I am now employed on a full-time basis with the University of Victoria - a job that I love. I have since purchased my own home. I have a new sense of the possible and of the value in seeking out and in participating in organizations that work for positive change in my own community. I will forever be grateful to Linda and the Victoria FSS project for believing in me.
To view other Family Self-Sufficiency participant success stories, please click here or check out their booklet Journey to Self-Sufficiency by clicking here
Tom Porcina, Serenity Plus
It was a rough two years for Tom Porcina after he was fired from his union job as a gas pump repairman for P.D. Maclaren Ltd. for using crack cocaine at work. He wound up collecting bottles to feed his addiction. His return to respectability as a business founder and owner took six years but would likely never have been possible without Vancouver's Eastside Movement for Business and Economic Renewal Society (EMBERS).
The registered charity provides business and training support to enable cash-strapped Vancouver east side residents to found their own microbusinesses. Once Porcina finished his training and had saved money to invest in his business, EMBERS granted him three times his savings as part of a matched-savings program.
Porcina, like most participants, forked over the maximum $600 allowed under the program. It might sound like easy money, but there was nothing easy about it for Porcina. Newly sober, he was living at the Salvation Army's Harbour Light Mission. Porcina knew that if he returned to smoking crack, he'd be back sleeping in doorways and mired in despair a world away from the income and personal pride that come from operating a business.
Porcina decided to give up crack and get his life on track when he was collecting bottles. Porcina called himself a handyman during his years of addiction, but he usually found himself preparing midnight moves for drug dealers and taking payment in dope.
The good news was that he had a hammer and some other tools. So he spent his newfound cash buying and fixing the transmission on a "crappy" truck and founded his Serenity Plus home renovation business. "The idea is to get a business plan together so you have something to take to a bank when you ask for a personal loan," Porcina said. Instead of applying for that loan, Porcina pinned posters to community centre notice boards and soon secured enough work to survive without going into debt.
In 2005, he made $30,000 and plowed most of that revenue back into his business. He survived thanks to living free at Harbour Light for part of the year. He now rents a place in North Vancouver and expects 2006 revenue to be approximately $80,000 once all outstanding accounts are settled.
To read the full story on EMBERS and participants successes, please click here.
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| This website was produced with CEDTAP, Vancity, Bell Canada, and the Royal Bank of Canada. |
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