Healing Hands workshop set to reopen after fire destroyed building

Members of Healing Hearts Ministries are working hard to reopen the Healing Hands workshop after a fire destroyed the building in June 2016.

The workshop, located in Regina's North Central neighbourhood, was home to the Healing Hands program: a sheltered work program for teenagers and young adults to learn practical and employment skills by building everything from bicycles to traditional canoes.

• Hope was not lost in the Healing Hearts workshop fire

The workshop works with people who have "multiple barriers to employment" such as someone who has an addiction and low employment skills, according toSpurgeon Root, the director of outreach ministries with Healing Hearts.

"What we aim is almost replicating kind of what happens with kids in their families as they're growing up," Root said.

"For example, when I was a kid, my mom started giving me jobs to do when I was young, it didn't start out with me holding down a job 40 hours a week."

But for "some of the people I work with, that never happened, so for them to job right into a job is zero to 100."

A helping hand

The program has been on hold since the fire, leaving a major gap in the community that's about much more than unfinished construction projects.

"Some of the people we work with were gang involved, and if they say, 'hey I'm going to go talk to this counsellor about leaving the gang,' well, you just can't really say that.

"But if you say, 'Hey, if I'm going to the shop to see Spurgeon,' that's OK."

At that point Root tries to connect young people with the help they need, but nothing is ever forced.

"One of the other benefits is that we're kind of peripherally part of the system so the community and the guys know I'm not talking to a probation officer or a social worker, and we've set it up like that on purpose."

A way forward

Root says it wasn't too long after the fire that he realized the ministry was going to have to rebuild, especially once he saw the community reaction on social media to the destruction.

"I had a lot of people saying, 'I can't wait until the shop is open again,' so there was an expression like 'this was valuable, we want to see it again.'"

Community members started a GoFundMe campaign to help with the costs, and Root said people often show up at the site looking to lend a hand.

The walls and the roof of the workshop are up, and Root hopes to officially reopen this summer.