The Downtown Community Safety Partnership\u2019s (DCSP) goal of creating a healthy, safe, and connected downtown Winnipeg community takes a lot of dedication and commitment. The organization is lucky, then, to have local educator and community activist Mitch Bourbonniere on their team, whose level of commitment to Winnipeg\u2019s core community is unmatched.<\/p>\n
That commitment began early in Bourbonniere\u2019s life, after a tough childhood as he grew up in St. Boniface \u2013 the same neighbourhood he still lives in today.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI had a very difficult early childhood with some difficult experiences. Then as a teenager, I found Rossbrook House, which is still there,\u201d said Bourbonniere of the youth drop-in centre located on Ross Avenue. \u201cI went and became a part of that community and started volunteering there and got into being a helper.\u201d<\/p>\n
That experience clearly meant a lot to Bourbonniere and sparked a passion in him for helping others that still burns strong today.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne opportunity merged into another, and that merged into another, and here I am today involved in lots of different things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Lots of different things\u2019 almost seems an understatement when you look at Bourbonniere\u2019s extensive list of organizations he works and volunteers with. Joining the DCSP is only the most recent opportunity Bourbonniere has taken on. He\u2019s a founding member of the original Bear Clan Patrol, and volunteers with Ogijiita Pimatswin Kinamatwin (OPK) and the Mama Bear Clan \u2013 both DCSP partners \u2013 as well as Drag the Red, Teddy Bears Picnic, CommUnity204, and Neemu-Egwah Inc.<\/p>\n
His experience with the Bear Clan Patrol has particularly come in handy with the DCSP. The Bear Clan Patrol\u2019s safety walks were originally started in response to women and girls sharing how unsafe they felt in the community. Those walks still take place and the DCSP is hoping to contribute to increased safety through their own frontline outreach teams walking the downtown area to ensure safety and support for the vulnerable population.<\/p>\n
Bourbonniere notes that developing those safety walks is not as simple as just putting feet on the ground. It\u2019s integral that it\u2019s done in the right way so that the community embraces the frontline presence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got a lot of learned experience on how to do a patrol in such a way that the community embraces it \u2013 that it\u2019s seen as a positive thing and not a in a negative authoritarian or law enforcement light. We want to make sure it\u2019s more organic, more community-oriented, and more friendly and gentle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having his master\u2019s degree in social work, Bourbonniere also teaches at the University of Winnipeg and Urban Circle Training, while being employed by Mount Carmel Clinic as well. Among his other work, he provides support to the Manitoba M\u00e9tis Federation, CEDA Pathways, North Point Douglas Women’s Centre, Rossbrook House, Seven Oaks School Division, the Shameless Circle, Elizabeth Fry Society, the Men’s Healing Together group and many other organizations.<\/p>\n
Those connections that Bourbonniere has made will prove extremely valuable in strengthening relationships with the DCSP as well. From the beginning, the DCSP has operated as a public-private partnership \u2013 bringing together various levels of government, public organizations, community initiatives, and private businesses to better downtown. Though the DCSP has already built several partnerships to create a network of support for those who need it, Bourbonniere and the team hope to continue adding more organizations and businesses to the list.<\/p>\n
\u201cA big role of the DCSP is to navigate vulnerable people to other resources and other organizations that could also be supportive to them. Having those partnerships is really important \u2013 we\u2019re able to guide people toward other resources.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Bourbonniere is involved in the planning and developing of many initiatives to help vulnerable people in Winnipeg, he\u2019s ensured that he\u2019s stayed very hands-on in those processes as well. Perhaps the greatest example of Bourbonniere\u2019s commitment to actively help those in need comes from December 2016 when he jumped into a Winnipeg river to save a young woman\u2019s life \u2013 an act he received the Canadian Humane Association\u2019s Bronze Medal of Bravery for.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not about the awards to Bourbonniere though. For him, it all comes down to caring deeply about the welfare of others.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe in community harmony, and sometimes there are folks out there who are struggling,\u201d said Bourbonniere. \u201cI think it\u2019s incumbent upon us as a society to go and meet people, mingle, and get to know folks to make sure everybody\u2019s doing ok. You can judge a society by how it treats its most vulnerable people, and if our most vulnerable people are doing ok, then we\u2019re all doing ok.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that level of dedication that Bourbonniere brings to the DCSP, and you can count on him being just as active with the DCSP in continuing to create a safe downtown Winnipeg. He hopes that the dedication shown by all members of the DCSP pulls others into their mission of developing a vibrant community too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really want us to be out there front and centre, meeting people, walking around, being helpful, getting to know the business folks in the community, getting to know the visitors that come downtown, and getting to know the folks that live here to create a real sense of community where we have a safe and positive town square.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":576,"template":"","news-category":[11],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dcsp.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/435"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dcsp.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dcsp.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dcsp.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dcsp.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dcsp.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-category?post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}