Str8 Up at a ‘crossroads’ amid financial difficulties
Group that helps Ex-gang members struggles to Find Funding sources
Father Andre Poilievre is getting tired.
At 82-years-old, the former Saskatoon Correctional Centre chaplain lives in a seniors’ home where he watches fellow residents battle the unrelenting process of aging.
Poilievre feels it too, yet every day he works to help men and women who want to leave gangs. He goes to court to advocate for former gang members and visits the city’s correctional centres to speak with people behind bars who want to give up their colours. He can’t keep going forever. “I don’t have the energy. If I had the energy I would, but I just don’t,” Poilievre said.
He keeps at it because it’s not yet clear who will take over if he stops.
Poilievre retired from the Saskatoon Correctional Centre in 2002 and was soon approached by two teens he had worked with inside. They were in a gang and wanted out. Would he help?
“I said ‘ Well, I have no idea either what to do,’ ” Poilievre recalls.
But he worked with the young men and helped them turn their lives around. He hasn’t stopped since.
“Two became three and three became four and word got out,” Poilievre says.
He eventually founded Str8 Up, an organization dedicated to supporting people who want to leave gangs and start new lives. He has volunteered with the group nearly every day since.
He estimates Str8 Up has helped more than 500 people in the last 16 years. Yet the group has always struggled to find money to stay afloat.
“It’s unbelievably hard,” Poilievre said. “We’re working with ex-cons, with First Nations/ Indigenous, gangs. And all of those three groups of people don’t have many respecters in the community.”
Stan Tu’inukuafe, president of the Str8 Up board of directors, says it can also be hard for some people to recognize Str8 Up’s successes. Many ex-gang members the organization works with battle addictions and end up behind bars while they transition away from gang lifestyles. But that doesn’t mean Str8 Up isn’t working, he says.
“Before, they were shooting people. Now their level of violence is decreasing. That’s how we’re measuring success,” he says. “They’re not going to be at university tomorrow.”
Str8 Up runs on grants and private donations.
A couple years ago, the organization was operating with an annual budget of $500,000 and employed two full-time outreach workers, a program co-ordinator and an executive director. But money has dwindled gradually.
Part of the reason is internal; Poilievre says Str8 Up simply isn’t good at governance and struggles to apply for grants and find other sources of money.
This year, Str8 Up is working with about $300,000. It employs just one part-time outreach worker, whose funding expires next month, and an executive director, whose money runs out in March.
The organization estimates it needs an annual budget of $1.2 million to be effective. That would allow it to employ more outreach workers and a court worker in addition to existing staff.
When the organization had more manpower, outreach workers went to the correctional centre to meet Str8 Up members when they were released from custody.
“We would take them wherever they needed to go and then help and support them. We can’t do that any more,” Poilievre says. “So when the guys get out, we don’t meet their needs because we don’t have the resources.”
It’s more common these days for people to find the Str8 Up offices on Avenue V South in Pleasant Hill locked because there’s simply no one around to staff it. The organization also has ceased doing presentations at schools.
Poilievre says Str8 Up is “at a crossroads.” It doesn’t have sustainable funding, which means the organization could fold if a solution isn’t found soon.
“If Str8 Up dies, there’s no doubt that the people that will struggle the most are the young people who won’t have the opportunity to identify with someone who loves them, who respects them,” Poilievre says.
“Can you name another group of people in the province that is willing to assist and support young men and women who want to leave the gangs? It’s the only reason we’re here, because they have no place else to go.”
Str8 Up member Debbie Waskewitch joined a gang in the early 1990s when she was 13 years old. She left 14 years later with the help of Str8 Up and is now sober, committed to being a good parent and trying to be a role model for youth.
She says she can’t imagine what people in her position would do if Str8 Up ceases to exist.
“There’d be no office to come to to get that help that we need for IDS, for getting to treatment when we want to get into treatment, getting to make appointments to get the help that we need. There’d be absolutely nothing. We’d probably just be lost,” she said.
Chris Moyah, who has been involved with Str8 Up for the last four years, says he would be dead or in prison if it wasn’t for the help of the organization. Now he’s a youth mentor and raises awareness about the importance of ending domestic violence.
“Because of Str8 Up I do that stuff,” he says.
“I just don’t understand why we don’t get the funding we need.”
Poilievre says some Str8 Up members such as Waskewitch and Moyah are interested in taking over the organization. But that in itself won’t solve its problems. Poilievre is looking at restructuring Str8 Up’s governance model and is talking to a group in Saskatoon about a possible partnership. The goal would be for Str8 Up to continue its work, but with support when it comes to governance.
“We need a partner. A strong partner, a committed partner,” Poilievre said.
Str8 Up received funding from the federal and provincial governments this year for members to assist in developing a framework for a provincial gang strategy — a process that involved travelling to communities across Saskatchewan and consulting with people about what needs to be done to combat gangs in the province.
According to a report published this summer, communities want a provincial gang strategy that focuses on preventing gangs as opposed to suppressing them; they recommend the province provide stable funding to Str8 Up so it can lead such a strategy.
Justice ministry spokeswoman Jennifer Graham said it remains to be seen whether that recommendation will be implemented.
“How the Ministry supports the provincial gang strategy in the future is largely dependent on what the strategy looks like for the province and how best to resource and implement the framework at a local level,” she said in a written statement.
Poilievre said if Str8 Up got stable funding to run the strategy, it would be able to do more for its members and expand to help people outside Saskatoon. But for now, uncertainty remains. Even if Str8 Up gets funding to lead a provincial gang strategy, there’s no saying how long it would last.
For now, the organization keeps exploring all options — and will hopefully form a partnership with another organization, “the sooner the better,” Poilievre said.
“We don’t have sustainable funding for the next 10 years and I do suspect that there will be gangs in Saskatoon for a few years. Once there are no more gangs, then Str8 Up can disappear, that’s for sure. But right now that’s our commitment: To helping young people who are caught up in the gangs and often not by their will, but by situations and conditions, and they want out and they don’t know where to go to get out. Jail won’t help them, that’s for sure.”