ASK Salt Spring: Answered - Ep. 39 Chuan Society's Kajin Goh

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

Ask Salt Spring Answered talks to Kajin Got, chair of the Chain Society about feeding the unhoused, harm reduction, the warming centre and other issues facing marginalized people.

you're listening to episode 39 of ask salt spring answered in which we talk to cajun go who is the chair of the chuan society okay i'm here with cajun go who's the chair of the Chuan Society. Okay, I'm here with Cajun Go, who's the chair of the Chuan Society. We've just been in Ask Salt Spring, and you're listening to Ask Salt Spring Answered on cheer.fm. So, welcome, Cajun. Thanks for having me. Now, I didn't know a lot about the society,

and obviously we've talked about it for the last two hours. Can you just give us a very brief kind of overview of what the Chuan Society is, how long it's been going and what it does? The Chuan Society was incorporated in 2017. It was a group of friends getting together and looking at a lot of the gaps in service which were happening on Salt Spring Island, things especially around mental health, equity, housing. But we were also mostly musicians and artists.

So we approached a lot of this through the lens of culture. And our approach is really less institutional. I think we're merging grassroots approach with being a nonprofit. But we realized that the approach we want to take was a community-based approach. We felt like a lot of the solutions were going to come from various as like harm reduction um the uh toxic drug crisis that we've been experiencing in the island uh food insecurity um the lack not lack of resources but not enough resources for mental health. And our approach is very collective and communal. So almost everything we do is really based on social connection and relationship.

Okay, and you said, I think you started off by talking about people power and seeing how your projects are evolving with specific mention of Gabriel's Kitchen. Tell me a bit about Gabriel's Kitchen. So Gabriel's Kitchen, we launched last year on Thanksgiving Monday, October 9th, with a grant that we received from Island Health, Vancouver Island Health. The seed for Gabriel's Kitchen comes from Gabriel himself, who was a dear friend, actually my first friend on Salt Spring Island. And sometime around 2015 or 16, he started a something he called Stone Soup, delivering soup, two pots of soup in Peace Park every summer.

And he did that for five years. I was really inspired by his doggedness and providing this to the community, even though he was out of pocket and poor, he was really persistent, obstinate even. And tragically, he died in a boating accident in 2020. The idea of a community kitchen had been in discussion amongst our friends. And so we decided to take on this project to build a community kitchen where it's not based on the soup kitchen model, where food is delivered to people. It's more that people have a resource to prepare food for themselves and each other. So the seed for that was planted shortly after Gabriel's death. We started fundraising around then. We got the grant last

year and we launched at the Gifts Building, Gulf Island Family Together Society on McPhillips. We ran there for about almost three months and then we found that the capacity was changing we had quite a lot of people showing up we're expecting maybe 20 30 people to come for the meals and it ended up being more like 40 to 50 uh we shifted to the anglican parish and by the time we hit spring end of spring we were getting an attendance of about 60 to 80 people well And currently we've switched from our dinner program because it's summer and people's habits change. We do lunch now every Thursday at the Anglican Parish, 110 Park Drive from 1 to 3 p.m. We serve around 2 p.m. We have a core group of volunteer cooks and guest cooks who come in, about three to five people and lots of volunteers.

I think we have upwards of 20 volunteers who are part of this kitchen at this point. And I think, you know, one of the things that came out of the meeting was how good it is for people to get together in this kind of way. And not just for the volunteers, but obviously for the people who are coming to get their food. And it forms community, and it's great for mental health too. Yeah, definitely. I think the social connection, the sense of meaning you have in doing things together. I think one of the casualties of modern life is people who eat alone all the time.

And I think, you know, we talk about food insecurity and that is on the rise. It's becoming a serious issue in Canada now. But just the mental health part of always eating alone, dining alone, something about breaking bread with your friends or with new friends, sharing a table, and participating in making the meal that you eat or cleaning up. All these dimensions are really empowering for people. So that's been a really wonderful thing to witness over the months. Yeah. And now you're going to be looking for a new home I gather? Well at this point we have the use of the parish kitchen and hall or parking lot once a week. The parish will be undergoing renovations at some point for their kitchen and the building.

We have always intended for this to become a more full-time project so we are looking for a dedicated space right now. And how what would that look like? At that point, I think it's going to shift gears from the one big meal a week to a constant delivery of meals. And the model would be more, would be more agency in preparing food. So what we're looking at is several burners having the capacity for storage and prep space and having food safe certified stewards of the kitchen. We've actually got nine members of our team certified this year. And that will open this up for members of the public to come in and cook a meal. It's going to be, we're looking at sustainably growing this project, but at one point in its full rendition, we can imagine that, you know,

between the hours of let's say noon to eight, you can drop in, you can bring ingredients, you can cook a meal for yourself or other people. We are hoping to continue this collective eating and dining together process. I think that's really one of the things that's the draw of this project. We also would like to expand to having a community pantry and fridge, a place where resources on the island can have a central hub for redistribution in the downtown core. So we have a lot of farmers who we're working with. Now that we're in the grow season,

we receive quite a lot of produce from the local community. So we're hoping we can help to establish the hub, which can be well looked after and stewarded to make sure that we always have fresh food, everything's labeled. And then the possibility if we're in the right site of actually having food gardens, places where we can actually grow our own herbs and vegetables. And at this point, you know, I think the project will change into being, aside from being a service, it's going to actually be a place of learning as well. So we're looking at workshops.

We're especially interested in that intergenerational connection as well. So we're looking at workshops. We're especially interested in that intergenerational connection as well. So training programs and workshops around how to cook, how to prepare food, how to grow food, how to harvest food. And then the other part, which we're always keen on is culture. So a place of culture. So people coming to play music while you eat, that kind of thing. We really want to be growing what has been happening with this project, which is really creating connections between people. One of the things that the kitchen has been really successful at is building new relationships between people who might never have met. So we have a lot of parishioners at the church who are meeting people

who live, are liveaboards or who are at the shelter. Those people are also cooks and they cook together in the kitchen. They clean up together and they know each other by name. So we want to keep extending that out and having a community resource that the whole of Salt Spring feels welcome to come to. Right. Yeah. OK, let's move away from Gabriel's kitchen for a moment. The warming space was something else that you guys were involved in, and it's been a challenge, hasn't it, to find a place to have that.

What's going to happen in the coming year, do you think? I'm not sure, except that our gears are spinning and thinking of all the possible scenarios and solutions. The warming space, which was the winter of 2021 to 2022, was more of a grassroots project. Chuan Society initiated the project and then it carried on as a people-powered project. But we had significant challenges in the sense

not of running the warming space, but around jurisdiction, liability, all those things where it's going to be so we were on crd public land and we got uh evicted three times by the crd once by provincial parks and sometimes we would move of our own accord if we didn't find the space was was appropriate so we were in nine different locations over three months, which is a lot of energy. And so we are hoping to revisit running a warming space in a way which is more sustainable. So that's the big question mark is where, where and how. I think the how we're able to do the where means that, you know, somehow there has to be an agreement in place for this to run in a good way.

We have even thought about, is there a possibility of leasing space? And with the caveat that it needs to be either somewhere around the Ganges core, because this is where the population lives. Right, right. Okay, and harm reduction, you're also involved in that. And is Salt Spring Safely, is that what it is? Salt Springs Safely is, again, a grassroots group

which grew out of a response to a string of overdoses and drug-related deaths, mostly toxic supply, showing up in the island. And it was very personal well every time one of these deaths happens it really impacts the community and it's especially pronounced in the folks who are in the Ganges Corps

the liveaboard community and so Salt Spring Safely was actually started off as a Facebook page that our friend Sherman Sherwood put together and then a number of us called for an emergency harm reduction meeting and then we asked if we could use that name

it seemed to fit what we were working on so we've been steadily growing since then and the network has been growing between concerned family members activists health professionals social workers to really advocate for proper services for harm reduction and and to deal head-on with with this this crisis which you know the numbers are staggering the amount of people that we've lost on Salt Spring and connected to Salt Spring has been staggering, especially since COVID. Last three to four or five years, I personally know over 20 people who are no longer with us.

And the current rate of deaths in British Columbia alone is seven a day. So you imagine seven a day and times that by 30 days a month and then how many people are impacted by that. So there is currently a consideration whether Salt Spring Safely should become its own organization. I think this issue and the amount of energy and dedicated hours it will take

justifies it's becoming its own entity in order to get the funding in place in order to really push and advocate for all the things that we need in this community from testing equipment a mass spectrometer has been in discussion for for over a couple of years overdose prevention sites is another one we've been talking about. Detox beds, really needed. Very often we have friends who have expressed a wish to detox or go into recovery, and there's nothing for them to go to on island. And sometimes there aren't enough beds off island on Vancouver Island and elsewhere.

And then the big one, which I think is a key piece, is Salt Spring having its own recovery center at one point. And a recovery center which really is holistic in terms of its approach because there's all kinds of methodologies and modalities. And so tailoring those modalities to each individual as opposed to a lot of the institutionalized methods which tend to be more of a grid that you have to squeeze into it we don't find i don't think the statistics show that that method works so right now of course all these

things cost money how do you fund this and what do you need in the way of funding i mean what's your goal for getting money well we're currently in in the way of funding? I mean, what's your goal for getting money? Well, we're currently in the grant application process. And of course, the larger disbursements are available if you pair up with the Charitable Status Foundation. The Chuan Society is currently a non-profit, so we don't get to issue tax receipts or anything like that. So this is part of the relationship we're building with present organizations who do have charitable status. So there's a grant we're applying for for the expansion of Gabriel's Kitchen, which will be coming through a local organization.

And then, of course, some of these things are going to require significant funding, especially if we're going to talk about things like infrastructure and buildings and leases and so on. So I think there's several pronged approach to take to that. One is the grant process. But the other one, I would think, is really appealing to private donors on the island. Salt Spring has a considerable amount of folks who who are off means yeah and who are also affected by this i don't you know um there's no cap or ceiling to who gets affected

by the drug crisis you know the wealthy as well as the poor it's it's all over every social economic and then the other one is potentially, in the case of Gabriel's Kitchen, looking into things like social enterprises. So we have really skilled cooks, trained cooks. Potentially, I've been workshopping this idea with our crew and our team about a catering company. Cater for weddings in Salt Spring

and get to provide a thriving wage for our volunteers and crew, but also funnel the profits into funding the program. I think it's going to be a match of all three, really. So if people want to help,

how do they do that? If you'd like to get in touch with Chuan Society, you can email us, chuansociety at gmail.com. Also, that is where we receive e-transfers and donations. If you'd like to get involved with Gabriel's Kitchen, come on by the Anglican Parish at 110 Park Drive

every Thursday from 1 to 3 p.m. Our cook's in the kitchen at 10.30 a.m. So if you do want to volunteer your kitchen, you're welcome to come at that time. And if you'd just like to come and meet some of the members of our group, that's one sure place you can find us every week. Yeah.

And we have a Facebook page for Gabriel's Kitchen if you look it up on Facebook. We have a Facebook page for Chuan Society, but it's not updated as often. We find that our projects tend to take center stage rather than the society brand itself. Okay. Now, one of the problems on Salt Spring, of course,

is the demographic we have is the stigma attached to some of these issues, right? And that must be very difficult to overcome. It's challenging. It's challenging, and there's a lot of speed bumps that we experience in trying to resource space, especially. I think a lot of it comes down to education, but I think our first base is relationship.

So relationship building means that we are starting to connect people across different sections of Salt Spring Society. The kitchen, for example, connects people who are at the shelter, who live on the water, with people who are parishioners or run businesses or are part of other organizations. So once you sit down and establish that relationship, I think the stigma really does start to evaporate. Usually what I feel is there's a cognitive dissonance around poverty

and around those who experience poverty. There's a cognitive dissonance around addiction. With addiction, for example, most of the society runs on substances, right? People who are on the street, the working class, the wealthy class, whoever you look at, it's just a question of how it presents. And for folks who are experiencing access barriers, it's just more visible. So getting that kind of understanding out there and also dissolving the idea that there's a barrier between us and them that kind of binary thinking

and I think you know the more we can grow collective projects where people do meet each other and see each other if if you eat someone's food you have a different idea who they are if you hear their music or poetry you have a different idea of who they are so we feel that that direct relationship is really the cornerstone of moving forward with these projects. So do you feel optimistic that things are going to get better on Salt Spring? I think we're at an interesting crossroads

on Salt Spring. I feel like, you know, I've been here 11 years now, so I still feel like a recent Islander, but I've been here long enough to see changes. And especially going through, you know know some of the major events uh the incorporation vote and uh covid uh things which were divisive and concerning but i do feel that most folks feel that salt spring itself is at a crossroads uh in a way which also connects to the world being at the crossroads where we're somehow hitting some kind of critical mass.

And that analogy of the boiling frog, when you turn the water up and it gets hotter and you might not jump soon enough, I think people are feeling that we need to somewhat jump and be less complacent. I think it's easy to stay complacent because it's hard to face some of the truths which are happening but i think the clue is really in collectivity uh i don't think building a higher wall you know or hoarding things is actually going to help us in the end it's really

like the meaning of life happens in community the joy of it as well you know but i think the actual resilience uh which is possible once we start to like um talk to each other and work together and and practice solidarity like actually practice it is something that i think is gonna shift how things are on this island we have all these major major issues which are happening around housing that's been unfolding for a very long time but now it's starting to hit people in their gut uh food insecurity is on the rise in a in a very significant exponential rise so the the solutions have to be community-based that's my hope is to see salt spring really uh strengthen that part of what is already beautiful here but could get better and I do feel like we are on that edge right now

but I tend to still feel optimistic otherwise I probably wouldn't be doing this right okay great well thanks for coming in Cajun and you've been listening to Ask Salt Spring Answered on cheer.fm the voice of the Gulf Islands