Operation Come Home

This was my first time attending their event: “Operation Come Home” Annual General Meeting, St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Humanities, May 12, 2010. Typical order of business: reports, budget, administrative questions, thanks to supporters… “Operation Come Home” would like to thank the homeless youth of Ottawa who in their struggles courageously hold out a beacon of hope for their future. We strive to support your dreams,” – says Elspeth McKay, its Executive Director. I’m sitting behind them: those who identified “eviction by parents or guardians, parental conflict or conflict with family as the most prominent reasons for their homelessness” (“From Homeless to Home”, research by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Alliance to End Homelessness, Carleton University and U Ottawa). According to the data provided by Alliance to End Homelessness, the number of homeless youth grew by 27% since 2008 and continues to grow.

“Operation Come Home” (OCH) is a non-profit charitable organization working to help more than 350 street-involved and at-risk youth, ages 16-30 from all over Canada, preventing them from homelessness. “Preventing homeless youth from becoming homeless adults,” – Elspeth often says: it reflects the OCH mission very clearly. She said this when I first met her as our guest speaker at Algonquin. She was talking during our CSR class about two social enterprise ventures for OCH: BottleWorks and BeadWorks, successful both financially and socially. The enterprises employ more than 100 youth. Many of the youth that have started working have found a place of their own to live and have had the ability to find a steady job as a result of working in one of the enterprises. BottleWorks was short listed as one of the top 12 social enterprises across Canada.

Originally called Operation Go Home, the organization recently changed its name to Operation Come Home to emphasize the need to maintain its original mandate: OCH remains the only organization in Canada to reunite youth with their families through its Reunite program.

Sitting behind these young men and women I was so emotional that I forgot about my camera. I wouldn’t've been able to take pictures anyways, as at some point I found myself crying. Thanks Ashley for sharing yours.

Algonquin: Life After

Chef Mario Ramsay presents the menu

Carrot soup with goat cheese

Chicken confit and chicken breast with vegetables

Dessert time

Crème brûlée with maple syrup

Our people - Algonquin!

Communications professionals

Natalie Lavigne - Ecoverde, and Emma Bedlington - Stratos

Sandra Markus, Communications Director at Algonquin, President of Ottawa Chapter International Association of Business Communicators

Where we all are? Some are visible through Facebook – surrounded by tropical landscapes, or smiling to the ocean in a Sun salutation posture. Some live in the area, so I ran into them couple of times, and each time was in the air this exulting feeling of a special connection, which only student life creates. It’s been three weeks and two days now. Three week “back-to-life” after an eight-month marathon called Green Business Management: a non-stop succession of study, analysis, exploration, revelations, reflections, discussions, confusions, conclusions, breakthroughs... All dedicated to the big three: People, Planet, Profit. To our responsibility to do our bit building a more sustainable and more equitable world. Green Leaders, Agents of Change, where are you? It still feels as if we will be back to the class after a break… I look forward meeting you in a couple more weeks during our graduation get-together to hear your news and to relive our most memorable moments. I hope our "green" paths will cross again in time, and I will blog our follow-up stories.

This post, first for the three weeks after Algonquin, marking that I’m finally back to life, is about Algonquin – our green Alma Mater. It is about an event I attended more than a month ago, during Earth Day celebration, so…

April 22, Thursday, 5:30 PM. Restaurant International at Algonquin College. I didn’t even acknowledge its existence while being a student: all the time running, deadlines for the assignments in mind… I have to admit that Algonquin campus is a place that didn’t stop to surprise me, revealing its simple miracles all along the way: the comfort of its facilities, the taste of the food in its cafeterias (best salad-bar I’ve ever had!), green cleaning program (so that you can tirelessly work for many hours – and no headache!), a thoughtful selection of goods in its stores (so that you don’t have to worry if you forget some supply for your presentation, or are having any other emergency of the kind); its new LEED-certified building growing beside, as we were growing through our program… Restaurant International became one more miracle I discovered being at the last week of my studies.

Restaurant International, Algonquin College School of Hospitality's teaching restaurant is a fine dining establishment run by Algonquin students. Culinary students create the menus and cook, and students of hospitality program deliver the service. That night Restaurant International put local on the table: we were having a 100-Mile Diet Dinner. All courses cooked with homegrown ingredients, including local seasonal produce.

Who said: “Eating local is boring”? Just listen:

Enrée: carrot soup with goat cheese (carrots – St Andre D’Avelin, goat cheese – Lindsay);
Main course: chicken confit and chicken brest (Spencerville) accompanied by a selection of vegetables – pureed rutabaga, beets, green onions (all from Navan), potatoes (St Andre D’Avelin), wild garlic (Cornwall), and fiddlehead (Alexandria).
Dessert: crème brûlée with maple syrup (maple syrup and sugar – Proulx Farms, Casselman, eggs – Navan, cream and butter – Markham).

All together - a mmm-yummy attack on uninspiring clichés about cooking and eating local: all was creative, memorable (a month later it is still worth saying), and absolutely DELICIOUS! And also, as seen at Algonquin many times before and under different circumstances: all done with high-level professionalism and passion. Work is love made visible: this is Algonquin style.

I hope the event organizers – the Ottawa Chapter of the International Association of Business Communications and Ecoverde, coaching and communication in sustainable development – will forgive me for starting with the dinner, served in support of the event itself: “Communicating about, with and for Sustainability”, an opportunity for networking and professional development. Conferences and other events hosted by Algonquin are worth a separate post. This time again, an inspiring speaker – Natalie Lavigne, a certified presenter for The Climate Project Canada, shared her experience in communicating sustainability with those who are taking active roles in addressing environmental and social issues: federal government employees, sustainability consultants, Ottawa U professors and students, and communications professionals.

It is actually quite exciting to graduate from an institution providing you with a pioneering certificate, fresh knowledge, eventful memories, bonds of friendship, a great address for eating out, and a year-round calendar of exciting events!

Bye Algonquin! Life continues. Looking forward to meeting again!