Hendrik Beune and April Smith of AHA MEDIA are very happy to help a library with excited Bosman Hotel Community residents of the “At Home/ Chez Soi” project.

With a new library onsite, residents can improve their literacy and life skills through positive peer community engagement. Sharing books and new found knowledge brings friends closer together at the Bosman.

Over 100 people will now have access to books and resources to help enrich and support their lives.

Many thanks to the wonderful support from Angelika Sellick , Literacy Outreach Coordinator of  DTES Adult Literacy Roundtable and Megan Langley of Carnegie Centre Library.

Plans to build the Bosman library started a few months ago and our first donations have begun to arrive.

The official opening of the library is scheduled for Thursday 24 May 2012.

Located in the former Bosman’s Motor Hotel in downtown Vancouver, the Bosman is an important part of the Mental Health Commission’s At Home / Chez Soi initiative – the largest research project of its kind in the world studying mental illness and homelessness. In Vancouver, At Home / Chez Soi is focusing on people who also have substance abuse and addiction issues, and over the next four years will provide housing and support to 300 homeless mentally ill people in the city.

Liz Evans, Executive Director, PHS Community Services Society, said: “The Bosman project offers hope because it embraces the very values our society strives for – one that is inclusive and one that says that every life matters and every individual deserves a chance to be their best self. The Bosman is an exciting start to acknowledging that we can live in a community, in a city and in a country where fellow human beings living with a mental illness do not have to be sleeping on our streets.”

At Home/Chez Soi: Largest research project of its kind in the world

At Home/Chez Soi is a ground‐breaking national research project in five cities -Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto,Montreal and Moncton – to find the best way to provide housing and services to people who are living with mental illness and homelessness. Using a ‘Housing First‘ approach, the research project focuses on first providing people who are homeless with a place to live, and then the other assistance and services they require. The goal is to see if this approach is better than traditional care.

The research will help make Canada a world leader in providing better services to people living with homelessness and mental illness.

For more information on the At Home/Chez Soi project, please visithttp://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/English/Pages/homelessness.aspx (English)

orhttp://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/Francais/Pages/Litinerance.aspx (French).

The Mental Health Commission of Canada is a non-profit organization created to focus national attention on mental health issues and to work to improve the health and social outcomes of people living with mental illness.  In February 2008, the federal government allocated $110 million to the MHCC to find ways to help the growing number of people who are homeless and have a mental illness.  For more, visit www.mentalhealthcommission.ca.

The PHS Community Services Society provides affordable, low-barrier supportive housing and services to marginalized people, many of whom suffer from mental illness, physical disabilities and addictions. These services include a supervised injection facility, detoxification and addiction recovery services, an art gallery, life skills training, low threshold employment and banking.