TRAC workers improving life in St-Henri 1 person at a time
Olivia Jones, Chelsea Berne | for CBC News | Posted: April 29, 2015 4:19 PM | Last Updated: April 29, 2015
Concordia University/CBC series explores stories from Montreal's St-Henri neighbourhood
Every day Stéphanie walks the streets of St-Henri helping members of the community live a better life and combating the negative reputation that has tailed the neighbourhood for decades.
Whether it's assisting people to obtain their health cards, or to get an appointment at the CLSC clinic, she is always there to offer a helping hand.
"Our job is not to stop crime or to change the neighbourhood," Stéphanie said. Her job, as a worker for TRAC (Travail de Rue Action Communautaire), is to make someone else's life in this neighbourhood a little better.
TRAC workers don't have fixed offices in a building.
Stéphanie, like her colleagues, carries all the supplies she may need to do her job with her, at all times. Her backpack is filled with condoms, food, first aid kits, prevention material, information pamphlets and other reference material.
TRAC workers can be found in most boroughs of Montreal. In St-Henri, Stéphanie and her colleagues can be found mainly in the metro stations, parks, and community centres.
Some days she will help someone find a job or write a resume, on other days she simply offers a listening ear to someone going through a tough time.
To maximize its impact and reach, TRAC works with community organisations such as the YMCA, Maison des jeunes La galerie, Famijeunes and neighbourhood high schools.
While TRAC doesn't have a mandate to stop crime, it strives to help members of the community become better equipped to handle stressful situations. In that way, TRAC acts to improve the neighbourhood, one individual at a time.
In recent years, Montreal police statistics show a significant decrease in reported crime in the Saint-Henri area.
Stéphanie says that gentrification has affected the dynamic of the neighbourhood, which has "changed so much over the last five or six years."
Lower crime incidence is a positive step forward. At the same time, "it is hard for people of the area to adapt to new places, new businesses, and new services," she said.
Stéphanie and her colleagues work with many people who have lost their jobs as a result of St-Henri's transformation.
Many of these people worked for the same business for decades, and when those businesses closed, they found themselves looking for a new job.
Stéphanie's job is to create a personal link with these people, and to be their support system.
All the work she does is on a anonymous basis, a necessity as much for the people she works with, as for herself.
Stéphanie and her peers hope to grow TRAC into a bigger organization in St-Henri, and across Montreal, to help more people. Her colleagues believe they would need two workers for every neighbourhood, one male, and one female, to meet demand.
St-Henri Chronicles
St-Henri Chronicles is a collaboration between the Department of Journalism at Concordia University, and CBC Montreal.
Students in a graduate-level multimedia course were asked to find and produce original stories on St-Henri for their final class project.
They spent the winter term developing these stories, and experimented with sound, pictures, video, infographics and maps to tell them.