BY MICHAEL BEAN
GIFTS ADMIN COORDINATOR
If you’d walked into Meaden Hall at the Legion on the afternoon of Sunday, Oct. 5 you would have seen a 20-piece community band, a conga line of dancers and a spectacularly diverse assortment of local folks sitting at tables talking to each other, drawing, eating snacks and generally having a great time. It looked like a party.
You probably wouldn’t have known that it was also the annual general meeting (AGM) for a local charitable non-profit organization, but that’s exactly what was happening.
You may know GIFTS — the Gulf Islands Families Together Society — as “that building across from ArtSpring,” an unassuming white one-story cinderblock structure opposite the lower ArtSpring parking lot, by the entrance to Mouat Park. Inside this nondescript building lives a little organization that has been quietly supporting folks with developmental and cognitive disabilities on Salt Spring Island for the last 26 years, and they’re doing it in an innovative way that is unlike any other care organization on the island.
Amanda Myers, GIFTS’ executive director since July of 2023, likens the organization’s approach to the Indigenous communities where she lived and worked in her previous position as director of the Indigenous Student Centre at Western University in London, Ont.
“We take a holistic approach to inclusion, and that approach to community inclusion and wellness comes from an Indigenous way of knowing . . . because in Indigenous communities it’s not ‘How do you fit into the community?’ it’s ‘How does the community grow around you, how do you want to be a part of it?’”
Individualized care and community connectedness have been part of the GIFTS mandate since the beginning. It was founded in 1999 by a group of parents who wanted to improve opportunities and quality of life for their developmentally challenged children as they grew into adulthood.
At GIFTS, support workers are one-on-one with participants, and collaborate with family to create individualized programming. Participants get to choose what they want to do. While there are some group activities like weekly bingo and art workshops, participants are free to attend when they want to.
The group programs aren’t limited to GIFTS participants either. On any given Tuesday the art program may also include participants from Island Community Services and Choices, and support staff from those organizations.
“It’s important to collaborate and partner to create efficiency in funding and resources. It fosters healthy relationships across community and removes the competitive nature of grant-funded opportunities,” said Myers.
One of the exciting developments at GIFTS this year is a partnership with The Diverse Village, a new non-profit dedicated to supporting local neurodiverse youth and their families. Although less than a year old, The Diverse Village has received substantial grants from the Victoria Foundation and the Salt Spring Foundation and provided support for more than 70 local families with neurodivergent children, sharing resources, activities and ideas in a supportive space.
“We wanted to build a community where we could connect and support each other, and it’s turned into this beautiful collective of people,” said The Diverse Village’s director Anna Vineyard, who also attended the GIFTS AGM.
GIFTS has ambitions to continue to foster local connections, and grow to include more program options for diversely abled folks of all ages. To support their upcoming programs, people are asked to consider volunteering or making a donation. GIFTS is a non-profit and a registered charity. See gulfislandgifts.com for more information.
And next year, feel free to come to the AGM party, too.