Now, more than ever, it's important for companies to recognize their staff in meaningful ways that make them feel valued and appreciated. As our economy evolves, people are more uncertain about their future, yet they are being asked to contribute more and work harder.

An organization is only as strong as its people, and these are the people that are working longer, coming up with new ideas, making sacrifices on your behalf, and hopefully helping you survive.

How are you showing them that their efforts are appreciated and that you value them as part of your community?

We'd love to see more support for local community and professional grassroots theatre so we can continue to support our artists, actors, musicians, writers, playwrights, tech folk and all involved... No More Cuts please!

As a new mother of a beautiful baby girl, I am taking this year to motivate myself toward a more life-changing, fun, and community-healing career.

Here's the vision.......

One set of barriers that unemployed men in the Vancouver downtown and downtown eastside continue to face is work appropriate clothing. For the unemployed men wanting needing suits or jackets for job interviews, the lack of business appropriate clothing is a challenge. Likewise, for men wanting to move into construction and labour work, the lack of work gloves, steel toe work boots or other working gear may prevent them from being allowed to even walk onto a construction site to enquire about a job.

Working Gear is a non-profit agency operating in the downtown eastside that matches unemployed men up with appropriate work clothing to assist them to move back into the paid labour force. Our overhead is very low, but our ambitions are great! Our goal is to try and reduce or eliminate systematic barriers that stand between motivated workers and paid employment.

If you are interested in donating spare used clothing, or volunteering your time and energy, please drop us a line. Likewise, if you are interested in hooking up some working gear, check us out at workinggear.ca or email us at workinggear@gmail.com.