Youth shelter comes to 
Fourth Avenue Baptist

By Joshua VanNoppen 
and Ashley Chapman

Thursday nights are about to get a lot warmer and safer for homeless and under-housed youth in Ottawa. This month marks the start of a Thursday night youth shelter in the basement of Fourth Avenue Baptist Church in the Glebe.

Haven Youth Shelter is run by Restoring Hope Ministries and has been providing beds and a supportive community for youth since 2013. It all began when Rev. Jason Pino, a former full-time youth outreach worker, realized there simply weren’t enough shelter beds for youth in Ottawa.

“I was only able to get a youth into a shelter three times in my three-and-a-half years as an outreach worker,” he said. “The rest of the times when I called, the shelters were always full. So I would have to watch the youth walk away with nowhere to sleep and I would tell myself, ‘There is nothing I can do.’”

There were only two shelters for youth before Haven, one for guys and one for girls with 10 beds each, and they were constantly full. The teens also had access to the adult shelters, but they often didn’t feel safe there and so rarely accessed them. The frustration finally boiled over for Pino one cold night in 2008.

“I was sitting downtown with a youth who was still panhandling around midnight. They said they were tired and got up to leave, so I asked where they were planning to go,” explained Pino. “The youth looked at me and said, ‘I am going to go hang out in front of the strip club. Sometimes when people come out and see me sitting on the ground they offer to take me home with them.’ It was like a bomb went off in my heart.”

Pino and some friends finally opened an overnight emergency shelter in a downtown church several years later and after a long battle with City by-laws. They offered a warm meal, 15 beds and enough floor space for anyone under 25 who wanted to stay one night a week.

After a couple of years, the success of the shelter convinced the City to let them expand to being open Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. Later, Restoring Hope received special permission from the City to run a shelter at any “place of faith” in Ottawa. Considering the fact that their downtown church wasn’t able to host any more evenings, and that their long-term goal was to operate seven nights a week, this news was monumental.

Enter Rev. Cheryle Hanna and the congregation of Fourth Avenue Baptist Church. Hanna had already helped catalyze an eight-week food drive for Centretown Food Bank, a live music series in the church courtyard and an increase in giving to missions since arriving at the church. But she still felt like there was something missing.

“It wasn’t ‘connected’ enough for me,” said Hanna. “I asked the leaders to explore out-of-the-cold ministry. They agreed. I looked for Jason Pino to discuss the work Restoring Hope was doing.”

The congregation eagerly offered the kitchen and gym in its building’s basement when they heard about the Haven Youth Shelter and its need for a new location. It was soon decided that Haven 2 would provide a space for youth to sleep on Thursday nights, bringing the shelter’s total nights per week to four.

Twenty beds have already been donated, and a small group of volunteers is assembling from the Glebe and across the city. Currently, Haven 2 plans to open for its first night on December 10. Haven 2 is still looking for volunteers who can commit to one Thursday per month. Needed roles include cooks, grocery shoppers, shelter laundry workers, overnight supervisors and drop-in hosts willing to befriend and mentor the youth who attend.

The shelter is also still accepting donations of supplies, including single-sized bed sheets, pillowcases and blankets in good condition and board and video games that will be fun for the teens. There’s also a continuing need for new socks, underwear, toiletries and clean winter clothing, backpacks and shoes.

Finally, several local churches have already donated money, but there is still a need for one-time and monthly donations to cover the cost of providing meals every week. Cheques can be made out to Restoring Hope Ministries and dropped off anytime at Fourth Avenue Baptist Church, and donations are accepted online through www.RestoringHope.ca.

Joshua VanNoppen delivers the Glebe Report with his wife and is the Haven 2 site supervisor. If you would like to assist with the shelter in any way, you can contact him at jbvannoppen@gmail.com.

 Ashley Chapman is an outreach volunteer and a writer and editor in the Glebe.