Iqaluit’s soup kitchen closes

MICHAELA RODRIGUE
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — Iqaluit’s poor now have no soup kitchen to turn to, after a disintegrated board of directors and local apathy have caused the doors of the Sailivik Centre to close.

The Sailivik Centre locked its doors — maybe for good — on Tuesday evening. The action leaves Iqaluit’s homeless without a place to get hot meal sand puts an end to an institution that has struggled to attract the people it needs to stay alive.

This week, the Sailivik Centre gave up its struggle. With only one member left on its board of directors, the centre can no longer run as a legally incorporated body, said the lone board member, Markus Wilke.

“Without having a proper board you can’t operate a facility like this, unless you burn out the couple of people that are running it,” Wilke said.

The Sailivik Centre is run through Iqaluit’s branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

No members left

In recent years the branch has run with only two or three directors. But now, Wilke is the only remaining board member, and he has moved to Kimmirut.

That leaves the Sailivik Centre without a board to run it, and leaves it’s one paid employee with no employer.

It also leaves the 50 people who use the Sailivik Centre each day, without a place to go for food. Each day the centre serves breakfast to children before school and another meal for homeless people.

It later serves an evening meal. In the summer months it drops to one meal a day.

Many of the people who use Iqaluit’s homeless shelter also eat at the Sailivik Centre. Where the homeless should go for food now is unknown, said the shelter’s manager.

“When they leave here, it’s one of the only places they can go,” said Gordon Barnes. Barnes estimates that 75 per cent of the people who use the shelter eat at Sailivik. The homeless shelter does not have a kitchen.

Money not a problem

The Sailivik Centre is not strapped for cash or volunteers to help cook and serve food. Instead it needs a full board of directors to set policy and guide the executive director, Lee Smith.

A new board of about five to nine people must form an incorporated body, Wilke said. Without a proper board, the Sailivik Centre can’t apply for new government money or continue to operate.

“It wouldn’t be ethical and it wouldn’t be legal,” Smith said.

Wilke, Smith and local activist Bill Riddell have tried to recruit a new board for the last four months, but have been unsuccessful. A recent attempt to merge the CMHA and the Illitiit Society into one board of directors. That also failed.

While many people in town say they are concerned about poverty, very few are willing to step forward and work on solutions. Wilke also says a history of working volunteers who have been worked to the bone has kept people from signing on.

“There is a history of people volunteering for boards always having to become involved in the day-to-day operations. That has actually scared people away from becoming members of any society, or even more so board members,” Wilke said

In search of a board

But with a full board of directors in place, Wilke believes it will be easier to find volunteers and funding.

“Funding will become available if we have committed people on a board,” Wilke said.

He said board members should only have to dedicate about four hours a week.

Board members would direct volunteers and paid staff and keep on top of the centre’s finances and decide what funding programs to tap, Wilke said.

Wilke hopes to organize a meeting next month to form a new board. But without a full slate of board members, the centre will not re-open.

“If we don’t have a board, we don’t have a managing body. We will not run things unless we have a board,” Wilke said.

The Sailivik Centre has been run through the CMHA since 1993.

Those concerned about the centre may contact the centre via fax at 979-3373. .