Steinbach Community Outreach helps people in poverty get through tough times

Steinbach Community Outreach provides a wide variety of services to people who are homeless or living in poverty. 

Every week, there are 35 to 40 volunteers who help run the drop-in every week, and each volunteer brings different skills that are used to support people who need someone to help them through a difficult time 

One thing all volunteers and staff members have in common though is a desire to connect with people and to help them. 

Lottie Klassen shares her cheerful nature as she volunteers in the food room. 

“I love working here,” she says. “We give out food, frozen foods, casseroles, soups and breads and treats sometimes, if we have some, and we just get to meet with the most awesome people here. I enjoy coming here half a day every week.” 

Office Manager Charlene Kroeker finds it easy to tackle paperwork, filling out forms, and navigating various social programs. She wants to make sure people are receiving all the financial support they are entitled to. 

While these are enjoyable tasks for her, the real reason she is motivated to come to Outreach each day is to help people. 

“I have a skill for filling out paperwork, doing those types of things, and if that’s something I can use to help other people get their lives organized, then I'm happy to use it to do that,” Kroeker says. 

She also looks for grants to apply for that will help support the work they do at Outreach. They recently received a grant paying for one of their volunteers to be a paid staff member, helping people find housing. 

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Meet the staff at Steinbach Community Outreach

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Liz is one of the volunteers who can often be found working in the room where they have donations of various toiletries and hygiene items. She helps people find the types of soap and toiletries they need. Right now, those shelves need to be refilled. 

“We do need dish soap; this would be great! We go through many, many loads of this. Body wash would be wonderful. We have one little, wee bottle of body wash, so it would be great if we got tons of body wash. We need deodorant, we need toothpaste.” 

Soap For Hope is collecting donations on April 18 at Pharmasave in Steinbach. Learn more about Soap for Hope here.  

-With files from Corny Rempel.