9. DTES Neighbourhood House

Organization Information

Organization Name

Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House

Mission and Vision of Organization

The secular, grassroots Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House (DTES NH) aims to provide meaningful opportunities for our neighbours to engage with and contribute to their community in an equitable atmosphere of sharing and learning. We welcome people of all ancestries, genders, ages, and orientations. Our programming honours and is inspired by the cultural diversity of the DTES and respects the fact that most of our neighbours are coping with significant socioeconomic and/or physical limitations in their daily lives.

Given the wide-reaching effects of nutritional vulnerability in our community, the founders of the DTES NH put the Right to Food at the heart of our work. We believe that everyone deserves access to food that enhances both their physical and mental wellbeing. Through our food-centered programming, we aspire to reform the nutritional impact, quality, abundance, and delivery of food in the DTES community.

Our mission is to provide a dignified welcoming space that creates and supports an improved quality of life for the DTES community.

The mandate of the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House is to provide programming and educational, leadership, social and recreational opportunities to residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Guiding Principles + Values

Our Operating Philosophy

At the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House, we embrace our community in its entirety: its beauty and harshness, its coherence and contradictions. We challenge the labels and stereotypes that are often imposed on our neighbours, choosing instead to see complex individuals living multifaceted lives.

In planning and delivering our programs, we strive to be, among other things, compassionate, inclusive, resourceful, and fun. We steer away from a hierarchical charity model, positioning ourselves not as saviours but, rather, as neighbours. Our aim is to offer quality community programming to Downtown Eastside residents, whom we welcome as the ultimate stewards of our organization.

At the same time, we are keenly aware and respectful of the serious socioeconomic barriers and physical challenges that many in our community face. While we have a special allegiance to those neighbours, we also heartily welcome individuals with greater privilege and resources to engage with our programs and, in so doing, to foster a more equitable and empathic society.

Our Right to Food Philosophy

The belief that all people have a right to be well nourished and to enjoy the benefits of shared meals is at the heart of all our programming at the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House. We believe that food insecurity is fundamentally a consequence of systemic injustice and that the typical charity model of providing meals to “needy” recipients reflects and reinforces that injustice. Through our values and practices, the DTES NH challenges both the charity model and the systems that underpin it. In the context of our own community, our food philosophy is also a response to an unfortunate paradox: despite the prevalence of nutrition-related (and other) health problems in the Downtown Eastside, much of the food offered by community meal programs is nutritionally inadequate. Refined starches, sugar, and chemical additives are commonplace; shelf stability and convenience regularly take precedence over flavour and freshness.

With deep respect for the many DTES organizations and individuals working hard to respond to a variety of urgent needs, the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House has chosen to focus on fostering individual and community wellbeing through nutrition. This choice comes with challenges. As a small organization with limited resources, we must pair our commitment to nutrition with a creative ability to stretch our food dollars. While this balancing act results in meals that are generally “budget-friendly,” we take pride in the fact that the food we share with our neighbours is also tasty, nutrient-dense, and, as much as possible, fresh, whole, and organic.

Meal selections at our many drop-in sessions are informed and inspired by the different cultures and needs of community members, with our family and children’s programs taking extra care to meet the special nutritional needs of growing bodies. A vital component of our programming—and our food philosophy—is education. Programs such as Kids’ Kitchen and Foodie Fridays provide opportunities for our neighbours to enhance their food-related skills and knowledge in a collaborative community setting.

By treating nutrition-focused learning and the sharing of delicious, healthy meals as a fundamental right, Neighbourhood House programming reaches beyond the more basic (albeit crucial) objective of alleviating hunger. We are deeply committed to our food philosophy, and we heartily welcome the support of friends inside and outside the community as we strive to put that philosophy into practice.

Contact Information

• Primary Contact Person(s): Kaum Kulatilake (she/her), Director of Operations & Community Programs
• Email: ops@dtesnhouse.ca
• Phone: 604-215-2030
• Address: 573 East Hastings St., Vancouver BC
• Website: https://www.dtesnhouse.ca/
• Alternate Contact Person: Maria Gaudin (she/her), Executive Director
• Email: ed@dtesnhouse.ca

Preferred Method of Contact

• Best method(s) to contact: Email, phone
• Best day(s) to contact: Tuesday-Friday
• Best time to reach by phone: Afternoon (12 noon-5pm)

Preferred Platform(s) for Collaboration and Student Meetings

• In person
• Email
• Phone
• Zoom