Animal World stepping up to help others

In uncertain times, certain people step up to help others.

Animal World owner Rob Andreas is trying to help those in need by offering a table of free supplies to anyone who needs something.

Andreas set up the table Thursday and piled it high with essentials like toilet paper, tissues, women’s hygiene products, bread, juice and more.

“I saw a Facebook post about someone doing something similar on their lawn, so I figured I’d try to do it in the store,” he said.

“I’ve been here 30 years and I know some of my customers are less fortunate – I decided that this would be a good opportunity to give back a bit.

“I just went to the store and grabbed a bunch of stuff people might need right now.”

Andreas says there’s a no-questionsasked policy with the table and that people are asked to take what they need.

“It got picked pretty clean ( Thursday) so I went and stocked up,” he said. “I’ve had people reach out through Facebook to see if they can donate to the table.

Longtime Hatter Mark Sakamoto’s television show has had its premiere postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The show, “Good People,” was set to hit CBC streaming platforms today, but it has been pushed back to an undecided later date.

The first season of the show will consist of five, 30-minute episodes. Sakamoto and his camera team travel to different destinations in the world to look at problems like homelessness, addiction and gun violence. They then travel to ‘solution’ cities — places that are finding positive solutions to problems.

The opportunity to host a show came to Sakamoto after winning CBC’s Canada Reads in 2018. Filming began later that year and continued into 2019.

The first episode of the show will look at how Medicine Hat is using a housing-first approach to tackle homelessness.

Sakamoto says the show aims to share a message of hope.

“We want to show that people are able to turn around their lives,” he said. “There’s actually a lyric by Leonard Cohen that reads, ‘there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in,’ and I saw so many people living in dark circumstances just surviving day to day.

“It was their resilience that was so apparent and you could tell they were hanging on and waiting for that crack and that light to appear.”

NEWS PHOTO MO CRANKER Animal World owner Rob Andreas stocks up a table of free supplies he is hosting at his business. He is asking anyone in need of a few basic supplies to swing by his store and take what they need, no questions asked.

NEWS FILE PHOTO Hat-born author Mark Sakamoto talks to a crowd of roughly 800 people at Medicine Hat College during a 2018 Author Talk. Sakamoto’s show ‘Good People’ has had its launch postponed due to the COVID19 outbreak.