Meet Alex – Summer Volunteer Coordinator

This reflection comes from Alex Hooke-Ward, who was our Volunteer Coordinator in shelter in the summer of 2023.

I spent my summer working at the YES Shelter for Youth and Families. My role was quite varied: I worked on social media, did some general maintenance and yard cleaning, did lots of gardening, and of course, coordinated and worked with volunteers, including clients wanting to volunteer. Throughout the summer, I came to gain a better understanding of shelters and homelessness.

I got to see a lot

By working in and around the shelter every day, I got to know the youth and families staying with us at YES. I was able to see many successes. People applied for and got jobs, people moved into our RISE Youth Housing Program, people were able to exit homelessness. These success stories, I think, would be far less frequent if it was not for the various services YES provides.

YES does more than people realize

Something that stuck out to me while working at YES was the number of upstream resources that were available. My impression of shelters before working here was that they were focused only on downstream approaches; in other words, I believed YES was an emergency shelter and nothing else.

In reality, YES has many workers and programs dedicated to helping youth and families avoid or get out of homelessness. Be it outreach, the RISE Youth Housing Program, or the Carriage House Alternative Classroom, there are lots of upstream approaches.  

Exiting homelessness is hard

I don’t want to paint an inaccurate or overly optimistic view of homelessness. While there were youth and families who I witnessed leave the shelter into housing, there were also people who came back to shelter time after time. There were some good days, but there were also many difficult days and situations that I witnessed through my time there.

There is a lot of hope

Emergency shelters and the people in them are much more nuanced than they may initially appear. One thing I noticed about YES is that there is a lot of hope that things for people can improve. Granted, more systemic changes are needed; YES alone can only do so much. But until more systemic changes are made, I believe the YES Shelter for Youth and Families is a great and vital source of positive change in Peterborough.  

Thank you Alex for all the amazing work you contributed to YES – we’ve been lucky to have you!