December 2, 2015
Volunteers distribute scarves, mittens and toques throughout downtown for the homeless.
Story by: Lisa Sutherland
About 30 AHS staff and their partners, who work with some of Calgary's most vulnerable people, gathered a Saturday to help bring them some warmth this winter.
Members of AHS, The Homeless Foundation, The Alex, Calgary Police Service, and other agencies that work with Calgary’s homeless, tied hundreds of handmade and generously donated scarves, toques and mittens, to lamp posts, fences and parking meters throughout downtown, with notes inviting those in need to help themselves.
"Coming into the cold winter months, it’s sort of an aesthetic reminder to Calgarians that there is this vulnerable population,” said Krystle Lawson, Outreach Nurse, Forensic Assessment Outpatient Service. “This is a way to show people in the city, to remind them, that there is this population of people that we forget about sometimes.”
Within hours, areas of downtown were strewn with the colourful items and at times they couldn’t even get the items tied up before a grateful recipient came to claim a little piece of warmth.
By the next day, every item had been claimed.
“Thanks to the generosity of so many Calgarians, who spent hours knitting these items, we were able to provide hundreds of Calgary’s homeless with something to help keep them warm this winter, which they may have otherwise gone without,” said Lawson.
“This is a great city and I’m pleased that so many people stepped up to help.”
