'Radical hostesses' assume Games role
By Ethan Baron
The Province
February 9, 2010
Blue-jacketed volunteers will be reaching out to visitors in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, but these women will wear no Olympic rings on their coats. Unlike the hordes of Vancouver Olympic Committee volunteers flooding the city, these community ambassadors are not operating with official sanction.
But when it comes to the realities of the Downtown Eastside, they have far more information and assistance to offer than VANOC meet-and-greeters.
A Sunshine Coast women's group has trained 13 women from the Downtown Eastside to work during the Games as "radical hostesses" who will roam the streets and staff a welcome centre for visitors and locals.
The project by Linwood House Ministries — which already operates a drop-in women's centre in the Downtown Eastside — was created as much for the hostesses themselves as for Olympics visitors.
"With the Olympics coming, we found our women becoming more and more agitated and not knowing what to expect," says Gwen McVicker, president of Linwood House Ministries.
Members of the faith-based group decided to give area women a role to play during the Olympics, volunteer jobs that would help them while helping visitors and the community.
"Mostly, really, we've been building into their own self-esteem and worth and value," McVicker says.
Ministry staff and others with expertise in areas including visitor-hosting, local history and crisis response spent six weeks training the women to provide visitors with knowledge about the community's history and people, and to help anyone in need of assistance, McVicker says.
The 13 women will be deployed Feb. 12, wearing new, light-blue down jackets and white gloves and scarves. Hostess Elizabeth Detcher, 56, has already been reaching out to visitors she's found in the Downtown Eastside, including the Chinese curling team.
Visitors are coming to the Downtown Eastside knowing only about the area's homelessness, prostitution and drug use, says Detcher, a former alcoholic and street prostitute.
"To be a hostess is like we're telling the world that the east side of Vancouver is alive and well. And, yes, we do have our problems but, beyond the problems, we do have a lot of people that are loving and giving," Detcher says. "We may be poor in money, but we're rich in other things."
Linwood House's Great Room drop-in centre at 108 W. Hastings St. will be open to visitors and local women during the Games, providing snacks, coffee, tea and hot chocolate, along with music and crafts exhibitions.
Linwood House is hoping to continue the hostess program after the Games, to keep building links between the Downtown Eastside and visitors from outside the community, McVicker says.
"A lot of people believe that the residents of the Downtown Eastside just enjoy each other's company [but] they love to interact with people from different parts of the world, different spheres of society," she says.
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Posted by: Beckyros | February 14, 2010 at 10:06 AM