LETHBRIDGE – Streets Alive Mission held its annual Coldest Night of the Year walk on Saturday, an event which saw nationwide participation, and over 100 walkers in Lethbridge.
This is the fifth year Lethbridge has hosted the initiative, and it was one of over 100 cities across Canada. In Lethbridge, the goal was to raise $20,000, and the mission inched past, raising $21,991.
“Poverty doesn’t take a break,” Ken Kissick, founder of Streets Alive in Lethbridge, said. “Poverty is constant, 365 days a year, and we need to be aware of it, good weather or bad weather. So this is just a great opportunity to say, ‘we’re here and we want to deal with poverty’.”
Participants made their way around Exhibition Park, starting at the grandstand, on either a two-kilometre, five-kilometre, or 10-kilometre route. The goal of the walk is to raise awareness about what it’s like to be homeless in the winter, which is a struggle Shawna Pinay, who works with Streets Alive, understands.
“Streets Alive has helped me in the past and they helped me to get off the streets and they helped me to learn that there is a better way of living,” Pinay said. “I was a lost and a broken person at the time and I had no other way. That’s the only way I knew how to live.”
According to the website, the Coldest Night of the year initiative has raised $7.9 million across Canada since 2011.
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