Placement with Sunshine House

By Sage

 My name is Sage Broomfield, I am a second year MDP student excited to be wrapping up my final field placement and looking towards graduation in the fall. I have been happy to spend my second field placement working with Sunshine House here in Winnipeg. When I moved to Winnipeg for the MDP program, Sunshine House quickly became an important community space for me, so it was great to take on a new role as program evaluator for their Drop In and Like That programs.

Who is Sunshine House:

Sunshine House is a resource space that centers harm reduction and social inclusion. This organization has adapted and evolved to meet community needs since the 1990s. Today, Sunshine House is a safe space for anyone who walks in the door and provides specific support for the 2SLGBTQIA community, people who use drugs, folks living with HIV, newcomers, and/or who are currently experiencing or transitioning from homelessness. Sunshine House runs five main programs. The Drop-In program, where people share a hot meal and can access harm reduction and other services as well as participate in activities programming. The Like That program is the queer Drop In Programming where 2SLGBTQIA community members can come in share a meal and participate in arts and culture activities, including cultural crafts as well as drag and performance skills. Street Feet is the foot care clinic that happens once a week providing needed medical care to folks who are on their feet every day. The Mobile Overdose Prevention Site (MOPS), is a pilot overdose prevention site (the only one in all of MB) that offers safe space to use substances, accurate drug testing, and harm reduction services. The Gizhiweminin program provides sexual health education and housing support to newcomers and members of the queer community.

My Role:

Sunshine House presently has four on-going evaluations for it’s programs. I am the evaluator for the Drop-In and Like That programs. This has meant building on the program evaluation that the MDP evaluation course designed, working  with Sunshine House staff to develop the evaluation further, carrying out interviews with all of the staff who work in these programs, developing survey material for participants, and organizing a townhall conversation for participants to give feedback about the programs. I have also participated in a range of House activities including medicine picking, beading, medicine pouch making, drag shows etc. I am looking forward to presenting the Sunshine House staff with my results.

Connecting the Dots: Understanding Health Self-Governance from an Indigenous Landscape

By Stacey Woods, 1st year MDP student

My name is Stacey Woods, I live and work within the traditional lands of Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I grew up in a small community in the neighborhood of Windsor Park with my parents and older brother. My work throughout the MDP program has been aligned with exploring and gaining a greater understanding of policy analysis, and more specifically and accurately, Indigenous health policy development. Through my exploration of health policy and my related academic endeavors within the MDP program, my objective within my first-year field placement was to apply myself through an Indigenous lens in an organization outside of government. 

Of note, I had previous experience in the Manitoba Government within the Indigenous Relations, Justice branch. I came across Waapihk Research from a mutual connection from my prior employment in government and became more interested in gaining perspective from the side of Indigenous health.

During my field placement at Waapihk Research I had the opportunity to dive into Indigenous health policy, or precisely, Indigenous self-governance and the operations, processes, and application of the Canadian federal health transfer policy for specific First Nations and Indigenous communities. I was tasked with completing deliverables such as a specialized report, progress report updates on a directed project, and a blog post on Waapihk’s website. I did this by conducting environmental scans and reading literature on self-government content from varying First Nation and Indigenous communities across Canada.

I can say without hesitation that my time spent at Waapihk Research has been overwhelmingly positive—the workspace environment, the relationships I have walked away with, and the work I was involved in built up my confidence and has set expectations for going into the workforce post-graduation. Especially within a competitive field like policy analysis.

Stacey at work in one of the Waapihk office spaces

Implementing Options Bytown’s Reconciliation Action Plan

 By Molly Damiani

Hello Everyone! My name is Molly Damiani. I am a 2nd-year student in the MDP program. I completed my field placement in Ottawa, Ontario, with Options Bytown. Options Bytown is a supportive housing provider that helps people get out of shelters into stable, permanent housing. Last year Options Bytown produced a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP). My field placement was focused on implementing components of this plan. 

Over the course of my placement, I supported a series of RAP deliverables. Early on, I worked on a grant application to make the common spaces more welcoming to Indigenous partners, organizations and community members seeking support from the two main housing facilities in the city. Later, I proposed communications and activities for National Indigenous Peoples Day and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. In my final weeks, I drafted a land acknowledgement guidelines document and developed a positionality statement for the organization and accompanying activity for staff. Finally, I put together a draft of a monitoring and evaluation plan for the RAP working group to utilize in their year one assessment of the RAP.

I feel fortunate to have been embraced by such a compassionate, motivated, and open-minded team throughout this placement. I am genuinely excited to follow their reconciliation journey and see how it unfolds. Upon my departure, they were in the process of hiring a coordinator responsible for the ongoing support of the RAP. It is fantastic to see a whole position devoted to this work, and it will undoubtedly help them to maintain momentum and meet the objectives they have set out for themselves. The Ottawa community is beginning to recognize them as leaders in this space, and many other housing organizations are subsequently exploring how they, too, can incorporate a RAP in their workplaces.