The first time Winnipeg mom Kayla walked into the Elmwood Community Resource Centre, she wasn’t looking for much.
“The very first time I ever entered this building, I came in to print out a resume,” Kayla recalled. “I wasn’t here to ask for help—I just needed a free piece of paper, to be honest.”
While she might not have gone into the centre to ask for help, Kayla needed it. She had just left a volatile home situation and was figuring out how to create a fresh start for herself and her kids.
The brave and bold steps Kayla took for her family created a new, scary, and vulnerable position: she hadn’t been in the workforce in six years while raising her children, and she wasn’t sure how to rebuild her life—while rebuilding her identity at the same time.
“As you leave those situations, sometimes you’re so beaten down where you’re just like, ‘Am I good at anything? Do I have anything to offer?’” Kayla said. “You have two kids, and all of a sudden, six years go by, and you’re like, ‘How do I present myself and all the skills that I have?’
“I had skills, and I’d done things in community capacities before, but just didn’t know how to express it.”
Gratefully, Kayla quickly learned the Elmwood Community Resource Centre had much more to offer her than a piece of paper.
Founded in 2001, Elmwood Community Resource Centre (ECRC) is a hub for resources and supports with a goal of making the neighbourhood—just north of downtown Winnipeg along the banks of the Red River—a great place to live, work, and raise a family.
Housing supports, a newcomer settlement program, addiction recovery, Indigenous programming, family counselling, an after-school space for kids Grades 6 to 12, summer literacy camps, and more are offered five days a week.
Last year, the centre logged over 34,000 visits to its Watt Street space.
ECRC also hosted 1,250 counselling sessions and another 82 for people in crisis. Staff provided nearly 4,000 meals, more than 1,200 snacks, and 9,400 menstrual products to community members.
“We look at support from an intersectional lens, where it’s not just one thing that people are needing—but what else are they missing, what’s behind the story that they’re bringing?” said Nina Condo, ECRC’s longtime executive director.
“Then it’s supporting that story and bringing that holistic support so they can move forward in their lives.
"That was one of the pivotal pieces of my life—just feeling like I had a community and someone that cared about me.”
For Kayla, moving forward in her life meant enrolling in ECRC’s Elmwood Youth Employment Experience—a 17-week program for Winnipeggers ages 18 to 30 to learn how to write resumes and cover letters, prepare for interviews, look for and find work, and other skills. The program also has a counsellor to help participants overcome personal and employment barriers.
It was exactly what Kayla was looking for.
“Even if I got my resume out there, it was literally more the building confidence piece for me. And that was part of the counselling that I was needing as well, too,” she said.
“When you come from a place where you don’t have a whole lot of family, and you’ve just separated from another big piece of that family … that was one of the pivotal pieces of my life—just feeling like I had a community and someone that cared about me.”
As Kayla reconnected with herself, she reinforced that giving back to the community is a foundational value of who she is. Her own childhood was challenging—growing up in care and moving from foster home to foster home—and being a young mom in a violent relationship created more crises in her world. She realized she wanted to return to the workforce in a way that allowed her to build on her lived experience and her passion for mental health services.
So, after finishing the program, Kayla was hired. After dedicating more than five years to the Elmwood community, Kayla is now the centre’s Drop-In Crisis and Case Management Coordinator.
“Mental health comes with a lot of compounding and challenging barriers. Mental health is attached to your housing, it’s attached to your addictions. It’s attached to your food insecurity and it’s attached to your financial situation … Any one of these pillars slips, and the mental health starts to slip as well, too,” she said.
“We’re really trying to meet people where they’re at and constantly give them something to continuously move and grow with.”
"No matter where you’re at in your life … there’s help to be had here."
In a full circle moment, Kayla met a single father who had recently gone through a separation and was on the brink of homelessness.
“It was really hard for him to even come in here,” she recalled. “We helped him with his housing situation. He was able to sustain that … and he’s really grateful. He feels like he’s connected here. He’s joined other programs, comes in for trainings. Sometimes, he just stops by just to say hi.
“So that’s one of the most beautiful, one of the most amazing pieces about our place. No matter where you’re at in your life … there’s help to be had here, and there’s a way that we can work together to help each other.”
ECRC has been a United Way Winnipeg agency partner for over 20 years. Condo says the scope of programs and resources wouldn’t be possible without the generosity of donors, who believe in investing in a centre like hers because of the impact it can have for its neighbours—and its neighbourhood.
“Without United Way Winnipeg’s support,” she said, “we will not be able to do all of this.”
