A Winnipeg organization aimed at helping inner-city youth turn their lives around says it’s all about being a consistent presence in the community, and being there for others.
Four Sacred Hearts was started by a group of ex-gang members who sought a different path in life, and continue to share their positive outlook with young people, through weekly community walks, outreach, fundraising, cultural programs and more.
“Four Sacred Hearts is four guys who have lived a hard, difficult life,” executive director Tim Barron told Global Winnipeg.
“We are ex-gang members, in and out of jails most of our lives, some in CFS … and now we help reconnect our youth and our adults — even people who are elderly — to their culture, to their roots.
“We guide them back to their roots to help them find their identity, where they belong and their purpose in life.”
Barron said he finally made the change in his own destructive life after listening to words of wisdom from his grandmother.
“When I was last incarcerated, I was looking in the mirror and the person I saw in the mirror was dying — inside and on the outside,” he said.
“I finally listened for the first time in my life — I talked to my grandma, and she asked me to go look in that mirror to go look at myself…. I didn’t like the man that I saw, and she asked me to go to treatment.”
When Barron came out, he said the path in front of him was clear: to provide a more positive example to young people growing up in similar circumstances, and to help steer them toward their cultural roots and away from the streets.
Four Sacred Hearts member Jeremy Raven said he had a similar experience, and after getting together with the other three founding members, decided to change the narrative around what — to that point — had seemed like a “normal,” albeit destructive, way of looking at the world.
“For me, it was a harmful, destructive street mentality and a selfish way of living,” Raven said.
“I thought that was the normal because that’s how my environment conditioned me. I wasn’t healthy, I wasn’t living good and I spent a lot of years incarcerated.
“This new way of life … it’s given me the best peace in my life and I have the freedom to be there for others, to mentor, to be a father, a son, a friend.”
Along the way, the group has attracted volunteers from all walks of life who believe in their mission and want to get involved — primarily through the community walks every Sunday, where they hand out clothing, hygiene items, food and water to people in need.
Neale Gillespie said he started walking with Four Sacred Hearts a year-and-a-half ago and has seen the impact first-hand.
“I try to be there every week if I can, to support where I can in terms of getting attention for the great work they’re doing in community,” he said, “seeing if we can raise funds and/or donations of clothing, hygiene, water … things like that to help our relatives out on the streets.”
Writer Janine Le Gal, who calls herself a friend of Four Sacred Hearts, told Global Winnipeg the work the organization does was sorely needed in the city.
“I personally get really depressed and overwhelmed by the news, as many of us do,” she said.
“When I look at these guys, I think to myself, they’ve experienced such incredible levels of pain and they have chosen to turn that pain around to help other people in their own healing.
“They didn’t have to do that — but they’re doing it. They’re doing it every single day.”