Youth lend a hand in the big city

Leaving their homes in rural Manitoba, 29 youth and leaders from Altona Sommerfelder Mennonite Church chartered a bus to downtown Toronto for a week of volunteer work with Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) in the low-income, densely populated, ethnically diverse St. Jamestown neighbourhood.

Chantelle Wiebe primes baseboards for a new coat of paint during an MDS youth work project in Toronto. MDS photo by Bruce Hildebrand

From July 16–20 they worked at cleaning, scraping, patching walls, painting, laying floor tiles, and cleaning up debris to spruce up two areas that will be used by the 614 St. Jamestown church and other community groups.

Tara Bishop, associate pastor of 614 St. Jamestown, planted jointly in 2004 by the Mennonite Brethren and The Salvation Army, was pleased by the amount of work the crews accomplished. “We now have two renovated spaces ready for use. It’s a miracle,” she exclaimed.

Many of the youth acquired skills in the process. Orlan Martin, project director and chair of MDS Ontario, which co-hosted the group along with 614 St. Jamestown, enjoyed his teaching role. “It’s just too bad that there couldn’t be more of me so I could do more teaching,” he said with a chuckle.

Although not strictly a disaster area, the work will rebuild and restore highly used spaces.

John McTavish, a recent graduate of Hesston College’s disaster management program and a crew leader at St. Jamestown, compares this project to other disaster situations where he has worked.

“This is a different sort of recovery. We’re working so the community has a safe space to share with each other,” McTavish said. The neighbourhood especially needs areas for children and youth programming.

Leader Jocelyn Falk said the experience was an eye-opener for the group. “We live in a rural area and to come to the city is definitely very different – so many people are living in a shared space, needing to get along,” she said.

One of the highlights for many of the group members happened when an ESL (English as a Second Language) class, across the hall from where they were working, invited them to help celebrate their final class. They shared food, played music, and had fun together.

Youth group member Marge Dyck learned about diversity. “You see all these people and they are loved by God. Some came to help – complete strangers came out to help. That was awesome.”

—Bruce Hildebrand for MDS