A Way Home is a new national coalition dedicated to supporting communities and governments to prevent, reduce and end youth homelessness in Canada. The Coalition grew out of years of demonstrated success in collaboration among the national organizations in the sector. Founding members of the coalition include Raising the Roof, Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, National Learning Community on Youth Homelessness (Eva’s), Canadian Housing & Renewal Association, Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness and Egale Canada, and is supported by a table of dedicated funders, including Catherine Donnelly Foundation, The Home Depot Canada Foundation and Laidlaw Foundation. A Way Home is dedicated to inspiring and facilitating change through promoting effective strategies that shift the focus from an emergency response, to promoting prevention (stopping young people from becoming homeless in the first place) and helping those who do become homeless move into housing with supports as rapidly as possible, in a safe and planned way.
A key strength of A Way Home is that it is not just another autonomous national organization competing for resources and public attention. Rather, it is an outcome of active collaboration between a range of national partners, all of whom bring expertise, resources, national profile and members to support the work of A Way Home. To learn more about how we work, please click here.
A Way Home supports and enables communities to make this shift through a Collective Impact framework and a coordinated constellation of strategic and practical resources, activities and supports, and at the same time advising and assisting national, regional, and local governments to develop, fund and implement effective solutions to youth homelessness. The experience gained through the Mobilizing Local Capacity to End Youth Homelessness program, a national pilot to support six communities to develop and implement plans to prevent, reduce and end youth homelessness, along with the skills, knowledge and resources being leveraged from national coalition partners (and the private sector) enables A Way Home to make a real difference in supporting communities to plan and implement strategies to end youth homelessness.
A Way Home takes its name from the youth homelessness community planning process in Kamloops, BC and their extensive youth engagement work as they developed their community plan. Youth repeatedly expressed that there is more than one way home, and ‘home’ means different things to different people.
A Way Home will officially launch in Ottawa on Thursday, October 29th at a reception in Ottawa. All Coalition organizations along with their staff and Board members are invited to attend. The Coalition is co-launching with Ottawa’s youth homelessness community planning process. A Way Home will support this process through a catalyst Institute event on Friday, October 30th.