By: Sarah UrbanowskiCalgary Journal Wed. October, 24, 2007
When James Hamilton was 14 years old, he wasn’t exactly playing on the streets, instead he was living on them. He turned to the street just shortly after his parents split up.
At 17, he found himself at the Back Door, a place he had heard about from friends he had met on the street. The Back Door is an organization that helps youth transition away from living on the streets.
“I realized the street life wasn’t for me,” he said. Hamilton is now 20 years old and has been working hard to get off the street, develop career skills, and support his three-year-old daughter.
He is currently working through an apprenticeship to become a heavy-duty mechanic.
Marilyn Dyck, 63, is the executive director of the Back Door and has helped many other young Calgarians get off the street.
“Kids don’t have enough adults that care, we are just adults that want to help,” said Dyck.
This was the Back Door’s 20th year and it was also their first annual walk/ run in support of their cause.
Their “Steps off the Street” walk and run took place on Oct. 28 to raise awareness about youth on the streets and nearly 80 people were in attendance.
Hamilton was there to help set up the route and to lead the group along the five-kilometer path. Hamilton said that he left home for the streets because living with his mom’s new boyfriend was hard.
Dyck has seen her fair share of kids on the streets for the same reason as Hamilton. She explained that a lot of the kids come from broken homes, blended families, and it just doesn’t work. The Back Door stresses that it is a safe daytime community, not a shelter.
“We don’t want people to depend on the Back Door, we want them to figure it out for themselves,” she said. The concept behind the Back Door is that young people have learned to live on the street, Dyck said.
“And so community people at the Back Door act as cross-cultural interpreters to help them understand what they need to know to make their lives work.”
The Back Door doesn’t offer a place to stay, however it does offer a place for guidance.
It’s a place where youth can develop a planning tool, “a business plan for your life,” Dyck added. It is conversational, each person is an equal player.
“There is nothing clinical about it, just people helping people,” she said.
There have been over 800 “graduates” from the Back Door and seven out of ten succeed using the program, Dyck said. The program requires each youth to commit to 24 months and participants can’t get kicked out, she added.
And although the Back Door doesn’t offer young people on the streets a place to stay, they do offer a cash incentive. For every step that they get closer to their goals, they get $15 and they can do that eight times a month, Dyck said.
Dyck feels that it takes times to build a life back up. “It doesn’t just happen before your funding runs out in six months.”
There were also many other volunteers from the Back Door at the Oct. 28 walk/ run including project manager, Jaime Leslie, 29. Leslie started working at the Back Door after hearing Dyck talk about the program at the University about five years ago.
“The walk was symbolic because it’s where a lot of participants [of the Back Door] start making their steps off the street,” Leslie said.
