ISWP
FernClair's documentary short about ISWP.
Fern interviews director and co-founder Lyn Black, Kitty, chef for Inuit Soup Social, and Melissa, one of the current chefs for Sunday Brunch. These weekly social gatherings are the centre point for ISWP's peer community advocacy and empowerment.
Indigenous Support Work Project
We are a small but tenacious team of Indigenous people supporting the Indigenous Street Community in Burrough Plateau in Montreal.
The Indigenous Support Worker Project (ISWP) began in 2019. ISWP was a six-month pilot project developed within The Homelessness Working Group of the Montreal Indigenous Community NETWORK and funded by the City of Montreal. Led by Indigenous voices, the Homelessness Working Group coordinated multiple community organizations in the Plateau. With the support of the City of Montreal Commissioner of Indigenous Relations, ISWP renewed its funding and continued into the 2022 Covid19 pandemic. While the pandemic created a system wide crisis and breakdown of services, ISWP continued to provide street level services and coordinate with local and provincial pandemic emergency response. It was through our dedication to our community when there was little to no help available that we recognized the existing strengths in the Indigenous homeless community that had previously been invalidated.
ISWP is the first peer led Indigenous Street Community organization in Montreal. ISWP incorporated as a non-profit organization in May 2022. We are grounded in Indigenous harm reduction practices 'by and for' our community.
Our Mandate
The mandate of ISWP is to center and support the well-being of Indigenous people with lived experiences of homelessness through decolonial advocacy and revitalization practices. ISWP is committed to providing wrap-around care and fostering relationships of trust based in wholistic healing and skills development to support our community members’ transition to an autonomous and empowered life free from homophobia and transphobia, and other forms of structural violence. This is accomplished by providing:
by-and-for peer services for community members and service users using a rights-based harm reduction approach centring Indigenous ways of being, knowing and healing
resources in response to community needs
training and employment opportunities for Indigenous workers with lived experience of homelessness working in the mental health, rights-based harm reduction, support work, street outreach, and/or homelessness-serving sector
education and training for peer organizations and other groups that serve PTSA/ISWP community members