The Salient Group

New housing helps homeless women
Theresa McManus
The Record
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Women and children who are at risk of homelessness will soon have a new home in New Westminster.

The Salient Group, which owns the historic Trapp Block on Columbia Street, is making space available to the Atira Women’s Resource Society. The group will provide housing to women and children who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, with priority being given to women and children who are homeless in New Westminster.

“In a nutshell, we did not see that there would be a market for the new project for a little while. We thought it was a real shame to see the units in the Holbrook Block sitting vacant,” said Salient president Robert Fung. “When we bought the building, those rooms were vacant. To have them sit there further, when there is a need, didn’t seem to make any sense.”

Salient’s project would incorporate the Holbrook Block at 660 Columbia St. and the Trapp Block at 668 Columbia St. Atira will make use of 27 rooms in the Holbrook Block that were formerly used for housing.
Fung, a member of the Streetohome Foundation’s housing committee in Vancouver, mentioned the empty space to fellow committee member and Atira executive director Janice Abbott.

Continue reading “Trapp Block: New housing helps homeless women” »

We wanted to thank everyone for coming to the Friday Summer Social at terminus last week.  It was a gorgeous evening to spend in the roof top lounge and meet some of the neighbours. We hope that this will be a tradition that will continue on and help everyone get to know their neighbours and foster a strong building community.

Below are a few shots from the evening. Continue reading “Community: Friday Night Social” »

Gallery Gachet’s Out of the Rain

Salient is pleased to announce our support of Gallery Gachet’s ‘Out of the Rain’ program.

As artists’ work space is at an all time low in Vancouver, we were pleased to support the program with subsidized work space at street level of our newly completed Flack Block at the corner of Hastings and Cambie. Participants will now have a consistent, dedicated space in which to create artwork for exhibition at Gallery Gachet June 5-28.

Initiated in 2005, the Out of the Rain program is an evolving unique initiative that brings together professional and marginalized artists to promote genuine solutions to homelessness, as well as develop new methods of art production, sustainable art practice, life stability planning, and dissemination. Special emphasis is working closely with those artists who face significant challenges (mental health, housing, addiction, poverty) to maintaining and sustaining a regular art practice but who, in the face of these challenges, persevere to make art as a means of survival and self-expression.

The Coordinators are also working to identify potential retail and internet art sales 

opportunities, and researching and exploring alternative funding sources and potential partnerships to support the program’s sustainability.

Visit the Gallery Gachet online here.

During a visit last month to Strathcona Community Garden, urban agriculture co-ordinator Samantha Charlton shared her vision with (I-r) Jason Farris of Citizens' Bank, Robert Fung of Salient Group and BC Hydro's Bob Elton. Visitors drank tea made from mint grown in the garden.

Seeing Is Believing
A philanthropic program garnering support from CEOs adheres to a simple principle: You can’t solve a problem without seeing it

December 2007
By Krisendra Bisetty 

Philanthropic objectives, run the gamut of our desire to improve the material and social welfare of others, but in the busy corporate world they’re often measured by how willing the powerbrokers are to loosen the purse strings.

For the growing alumni of an eye-opening program, however, executives are finding corporate philanthropy means more that simply reaching for a cheque book. It’s engagement hands-on community revitalization that makes ideal use of their skills as business leaders.

The program, now in its second year in Canada, adheres to a simple principle: You can solve a problem without seeing it.

“One way that the program fits with corporate philanthropy is looking at what a business has to offer other than donations of money,” said Annastasia Palubiski, leader of the Seeing is Believing program. “Or, if they are providing donations of money,” how do they leverage that to create a greater impact?”

The program was born from the realization that sustainable solutions to seemingly chronic issues, such as poverty, homelessness and hunger, have to involve business, which has a stake in the health of communities in which they operate.

Continue reading “Business In Vancouver: Seeing Is Believing” »