We are Sanctuary, and we’re looking for an Indigenous Spiritual Street Outreach Worker to join our team in June 2024. This job is perfect for someone with a passion for justice, a desire to serve their community, deep empathy and ability to build trusting friendships, and a love for Jesus.  Due to colonization, there are a disproportionate number of our brothers and sisters at Sanctuary that identify as Indigenous, and as we continue our journey of reconciliation, we hope to offer culturally-informed and restorative care to Indigenous Peoples.

In the words of a member of our Indigenous community, “I believe a lot of us don’t know much of our Way, and I think it’s important to find someone that has knowledge in our ways, has been around the block, and knows their stuff.” 

About Sanctuary 

At Sanctuary, we continually strive to become a healthy, welcoming community where people who are poor or excluded are particularly valued. This community is an expression of the good news embodied in Jesus Christ.

Our faith and relationship with God inform us in identifying the following as some of our core values:

• Dignity: We believe that each person is created in the image of God and, as such, has the right to be treated with the utmost dignity.

• Mutuality: We come to our relationships recognizing that each person has gifts to be shared and gifts to be received.

• Inclusivity: We intend that our community at Sanctuary will be as inclusive as Jesus was in his life.

The words we often use to describe ourselves are “community” and “family.” Our staff and those they serve “do life” together. It can be challenging, complicated and messy. We find that it’s also enlivening, fulfilling, and deeply meaningful. 

Sanctuary is a freeing place to work.  While accountable to each other, we have a lot of autonomy to manage our own schedules and workflow, because we trust one another.  We each have a deep commitment to this community, as well as to our roles within it.

Each of our team, regardless of their unique focus within the community of Sanctuary, is committed to viewing ourselves first and foremost as members of the community. By joining us you will become an important part of our close-knit community. We hope that you will feel at home here and that you will want to be with us for the long haul.

The Role: Indigenous Spiritual Street Outreach Worker

As a member of the Sanctuary Outreach team your role is primarily to build relationships and provide practical love and support to Indigenous people in our community at Sanctuary (e.g. accompaniment to appointments, handing out harm reduction supplies).  Your responsibilities are broken up into four main categories:  Street outreach, accompaniment, community meal drop-ins, and Indigenous community care. Informing all of this work is our outreach philosophy, and a call to both give and receive spiritual care both to and from our core community.

1. Indigenous Community Care: As we continue our own journey of reconciliation, we hope to offer our Indigenous community members spaces where they can find culturally-informed care and support.  Our hope is that you would work with people in the community to understand what kinds of community building would be the most valuable to them (e.g. drumming, sweats, pow wows, teachings, Indigenous circles, etc.). You, with the support of the rest of the team and Leadership, will determine the best way to bring this to life, including through creating your own programmes or developing partnerships with other Indigenous organizations that can provide this care to our Indigenous community. This will be the core focus of your role and inform and shape how you engage in the other three aspects of the role (see below).

2. Street outreach: This occurs several times each week. You along with other members of the outreach team, the larger staff team, and members of the Sanctuary community will go out in groups of two or three on regular routes in the neighbourhood to connect with those who are panhandling, sleeping rough or marginalized In your role, you will seek to be extra attentive to connecting with people that are Indigenous. Teams will seek to offer conversation, build relationships, and sometimes offer supplies or advise people about relevant resources. Sometimes you will build relationships that only exist while you are out on outreach, other times you will be able to point people whom you meet on outreach back to the larger Sanctuary community. Another focus of walking outreach is to visit community members in the neighbourhood, whether in a tent, a hospital room, or at their home.

3. Accompaniment: A second focus of the outreach team are activities that would fall into the category of accompaniment. At Sanctuary we describe ourselves as a community, a community of family, friends, neighbours and acquaintances. As you build relationships with members of the Sanctuary community, you will find opportunities to come alongside an individual as they navigate difficult tasks, or tasks that are better to do with a friend. This could include, but is not limited to, going to a medical appointment or court with a community member, helping a community member clean their apartment, or helping a community member move. As you build relationships within our Indigenous community, we expect that you will focus on providing accompaniment to Indigenous members of the community.

4. Community Drop-in Meals: The outreach team also supports Drop-ins. Because so many of your working hours are community facing you will have the opportunity to build relationships with many different community members. And so one of the roles of the outreach team at drop in is to facilitate relationships; to welcome people whom you meet on outreach and to introduce community members to one another and other members of the staff team. Your relational capital and observations from being on outreach and community facing will also allow you to help de-escalate conflicts at the drop in and perhaps identify and address conflicts before they ignite.

 

When you are not spending your time on one of these four core areas of outreach, you may seek a secondary focus based on your own passions and interests that meet an area of need for our community, such as advocacy, connecting and maintaining relationships with other Indigenous communities and agencies, leading educational groups, or organizing outings for members of our community (e.g. fishing trips).

 

Our Outreach Philosophy

Why we do outreach: We go out to meet people on their own turf, both offering and seeking the welcome, dignity, and healing inherent in the community of God’s Kingdom.

As outreach workers we …

• We go out because Jesus has sent us, and because we expect to see and hear him through the street community. If we want to meet him in this way, we have to “show up”.

• We meet people on their own turf because we want to approach them as “servants”, not as people of power.

• We go out bothoffering (to others) and seeking (for ourselves)because we know we are as needy as anybody, and we can only truly receive these things together.  Offering is a way of seeking.

• We seek and offer welcome because the good news should go first to those who have been rejected.

• We seek and offer dignity because people need to know they’re respected and valued for who they are right here, right now.

• We seek and offer healing because people don’t have to stay in destructive situations or patterns – God’s agenda is transformation.

• We are inviting people to journey with us (that is, in community) deeper into the Kingdom.

Specifically, the Indigenous Spiritual Outreach Worker will…

• Provide pastoral and spiritual care to members of the Indigenous community at Sanctuary on outreach, at drop ins, at one-on-one’s, and at our Thursday and Sunday Worship services, or through other spaces that the Indigenous community sees as valuable;

• Develop partnerships and programmes that facilitate pastoral and spiritual care for members of the Indigenous community at Sanctuary;

• Provide compassionate community-centered care consistent with a harm-reduction model;

• Participate in weekly walking outreach, building relationships and observing the streets;

• Be present at drop-ins, helping to foster a sense of community and welcome;

• Be attentive to possible conflict at drop-in and ready to intervene with de-escalation skills;

• Accompany community members to appointments; 

• Accompany and assist community members in bigger life task such as moving, cleaning their apartment, helping with pest control;

• Visit members of the community in encampments, at their home, in hospital and in jail. 

• Help in the reversal of overdoses using skills in CPR and Basic Life Support (BLS);

• Collaborate with other communities and agencies to provide support to members of the Sanctuary community;

• Engage in reflective practice seeking out educational opportunities and debriefing with colleagues;

• Advocate for social policies that include just care for marginalized people, including Indigenous people;

• Partner with the Sanctuary Health Clinic and members in the community to achieve personalized health-related goals;

• Collaborate with the outreach time in advising operations team on supplies needed for the community (e.g. sleeping bags);

• Attend and contribute to outreach team meetings as required.

Additional expectations for all staff members:

• Involvement in fundraising (either personal or collective team efforts)

• Engagement in regular self-care practices and trauma-informed therapy

• Participation in weekly all-staff meetings and two annual staff retreats (typically offsite)

• Provision of both personal and pastoral/spiritual support for community members, including prayer and Bible study where appropriate

• Participating in training on anti-racism, anti-oppressive practices, and non-violent de-escalation required

• Participation in training for overdose prevention and response and first aid and BLS required (not a prerequisite for the role)

You’ll succeed in this role if you have these characteristics:

1. Your Christian faith informs, motivates and inspires all facets of your life.

2. You have deep knowledge of your Indigenous culture and traditions on Turtle Island. You don’t need to have all the wisdom and experience of an Elder or Traditional Knowledge Keeper, but you will be able to work with those who have deep wisdom to deepen the traditional Indigenous practices of our community.

3. You are comfortable with tension and ambiguity. This community includes a wide range of people. We don’t always agree, but we always care for one another. Sanctuary tends towards being a harm-reduction community, and the tension of wanting the best for people while supporting them where they’re at is part of our reality.

4. You are a strong communicator. You listen more than you talk, and you want to understand other people’s viewpoints. You are able to convey empathy and conviction.

5. You are resourceful. When something goes wrong, you know how to bring together resources on hand to make it right, whether the challenge is logistical or interpersonal.

6. You are flexible.  Schedules around here are written in pencil, and you’ll probably be asked to do things you’ve never done before.  You can change plans when the need arises.

7. You engage intentionally with self-care. This is a community that puts you at risk for trauma, compassion fatigue, burnout, and compound grief. It’s essential that you are someone who regularly accesses a personal support network and strives to maintain health through activities and resources that ground and inspire you.

Hours and Compensation

• Full-time, permanent or one-year contract with 1-2 evenings/wk and 1 weekend/month. We are open to part-time applications on a contract basis at a minimum of 20 hrs / week.

• $55,560 (prorated for part-time), plus you may be eligible for additional financial dependant benefits

• Benefits package, including LTD (both financial and other benefits)

• 4 weeks of paid vacation per year (prorated for part-time)

How to Apply

Online application

Applicants interested in applying, please provide a Cover Letter and a Resume highlighting their suitability for this role along with a resume by Sunday, May 19 at 11:59pm.   

Our online application will give you the option to apply to this role as a complete person – not just a resume.  The application will assess your qualifications, personality traits and workplace preferences, and should take 10 to 15 minutes to complete. After submitting, you'll receive an email inviting you to log in and view your assessment results.

We value diversity and inclusion and encourage all qualified people to apply. If we can make this easier through accommodation in the recruitment process, please contact us with the “Help” button in the application.

We will review applications as they are received and look forward to hearing from you.

Interview Process

After the initial online application process, the interview process at Sanctuary involves several steps. While we acknowledge that the process is fairly lengthy and involved, we believe it is an important process.

1. Those candidates for whom an interview is desired will be contacted by Friday May 24, 2024, so that an interview time can be set within the following week 

2. Interviews will be conducted with a hiring team the week of May 27-31 (these dates may shift a bit depending on availability of candidates).

3. After the interview, short-listed candidates will be asked to attend at least one Sanctuary worship service (Sunday afternoons between 5:00 and approximately 7:15), and a Sanctuary drop-in for a minimum of one hour. The drop-in times are Tuesday between 10:30 am – 3:00 pm and Thursday between 4:30 pm – 9:00 pm. Prior to attending the drop-in, the candidate should contact the team to ensure arrangements can be made to provide an orientation to the drop-in setting at Sanctuary. You also will have a chance to meet with Indigenous members of our community in a smaller group during a drop-in visit. No such arrangements need to be made for the worship service. These experiences may provide an opportunity for the candidate to talk with some of our team and will offer them a valuable opportunity to get a first-hand sense of the Sanctuary community.

4. After the interview and visits are completed, a successful candidate will be selected and your references will be contacted. 

5. Subject to the mutual agreement of yourself and the team, you will be asked to join us.  The target start date is late June 2024.