Winnipeg organizations get funding boost for mental health programs

Two Winnipeg community organizations are getting a boost to help support their mental health services.

A $100,000 bump from Bell Canada's Bell Let's Talk diversity fund will help Mount Carmel Clinic, a community health agency on Main Street, introduce an Indigenous cultural connector.

"As we reach out to build more ceremony into our programs, to bring more healing to our community, to bring more cultural supports,this role is going to allow us to connect that throughout the agency and spread it throughout the community," executive director Bobbette Shoffner said at a news conference Tuesday.

"So not only Mount Carmel Clinic community members will benefit from this, but the further community members as well."

Community organization Ndinawemaaganag Endaawaad on Flora Avennue is also among the recipients of this year's grants.

Shoffnersaid Mount Carmel serves between 10,000 and 15,000 people annually, most of them Indigenous, across its health-care and community programs.

In conversation with elders, the organization has learned there is a need for more traditional Indigenous healing practices. That includes more land-based teachings, spaces for smudging ceremonies and having elders present to help in a 12-step program for women experiencing addictions.

"We're trying to create programs that we know touches the heart and the spirit of our people," said elder Mae Louise Campbell, who has worked with Mount Carmel the past few years.

"We see what happens to people when they don't know who they are. They do whatever they can to bring more pain to the bodies, to their minds ... and they have lost complete connection to their spirit."

The creation of an Indigenous cultural connector role is meant to help support elders and knowledge keepers at the clinic, and connect clients and patients with community programs outside the clinic.

Campbell, who also spent 15 years at Red River College in an Indigenous advisor role, said having more joint programs in the broader community isimportant for bridging the gap. As an example, she citedthe success of a carpentry training initiative run through Clan Mothers Healing Village that Mount Carmel clients took part in.

"You should see them: they're just amazing now, they're just so, so excited and feeling so happy and have found who they really are as women," she said.

"We will teach them their value by creating social enterprise for them so they can become self-reliant, not just go heal at a place."

Bell takes different approach

Bell said in a news release it's doling out $1.1 million to a total of 11 organizations in Canada working to reduce stigma around mental illness and increase access to culturally informed mental health and well-being support for Black, Indigenous and people of colour communities.

The news comes a few weeks after Bell announced it was overhauling its charitable initiative that supports mental health, replacing a program that saw the company donate five cents every time Canadians used the hashtag BellLetsTalkwith a lump-sum donation of $10 million.

The Bell Let's Talk initiative, which started in 2010, was at first a marketing win for Bell, but in recent years, the popularity of the hashtag has also attracted some unwanted scrutiny to the company.

The diversity fund has given out $4.45 million in grants to 39 organizations since it launched in 2020, Bell's news release said.

This year's grant recipients include AGIR: Action lesbienne, gai, bisexuelle, trans et queer (LGBTQ) avec les immigrantEs et les rfugiEs; Canadian Centre for Victims of Armed Conflicts; Foxe Basin North Kivalliq Sapujiyiit/Guardians of the Sea Society; Ionkwahronkha'onhatie; Kehewin Native Dance Theatre; Mshkikii Gamik Medicine Lodge at Health Sciences North; the Refugee Centre; VIBE Arts; and the Woodstock First Nation Health Centre.

WATCH |$100K will help Mount Carmel Clinicintroduce Indigenous cultural connector:

Winnipeg organizations get funding boost for mental health programs

2 years ago

Duration 2:22

Two Winnipeg community organizations are getting a boost to help support their mental health services. A $100,000 bump from Bell Canada's Bell Let's Talk diversity fund will help Mount Carmel Clinic, a community health agency on Main Street, introduce an Indigenous cultural connector.