LoveCry in partnership with The Toronto Street News!

"What We Can Learn From Other Countries!"
By Angel Femia
of LoveCry

Reciently I went on a trip, to see how people run non-profits in the United States. I also wanted to see if they actually worked together with one another without competing and trying to put each other out of business as they do here in Toronto.

We, at LoveCry have been looking for someone to vulenteer to help direct the company. I have been doing this job for ten years. Since we are located in Toronto, we first looked here. We found a few people, some with good experience at successfully operating no-profits here in Toronto.

We also found problems we had never even dreamed we would find. This awakening was a horrid nightmere. These men were completely rejecting the facts of abuse. They did not even realize that being nasty, yelling, demanding,, degrading and threatening people was abuse.

"COMPLETE AND TOTAL DENIEL!"

Last spring we offered this job to three Toronto men {as I said they were very well experienced with non-profits}, to try out and see if they fit in. As everyone knows, by now, that LoveCry is owned by the homeless kids therefore we must to be very careful whom we have working here. Anyone we hire for this type of job, at LoveCry, must have first hand experience in major abuse issues, personal street experience and education in all the areas we are dealing with. All of these men had these assets. They had been abused, lived on the streets within their lives and been educated where needed. With each person we truly believed we had found the right one. What a let down, when we found that these men had no skills dealing with abused kids and women other then being abusive towards them. They were very nice and respectful during the first few meetings, so we gave them each a trial job. As soon as they felt comfortable at LoveCry, their true natures appeared. Something we were not expecting, they were still abusing. We were broaken hearted.

We then talked to each of them about attending therapy to deal with their problems and that we would reconsider them for the job when they had gotten this work completed. We even offered this to them at no cost by therapists outside of LoveCry, at no cost to them.

Well you would have thought we had attacked these men with atomic bombs. They yelled, screamed, walked out, then proceeded to cause us more trouble then any of them were worth. The kids were devastated by this, so we decided to look elsewhere.

I went to see some friends I had met on the internet in the United States. My friend and I went to many non-profits around the area he worked and lived. The difference was fanominal. Do you know they do not compete with each other but rather help each other as we have been doing here at LoveCry. A good example of this is that if one company does not have goods needed and another does, they give what they have in surplus to the one in need. LoveCry does this with all of our donations. What we do not need, we send to the other companies in our community. They do not fight over funding, but rather go and work to get what they can and SHARE.

Another thing we found was that the men in the United States are lining up at the doors to get therapy. They want to heal and they do realize that abuse victims need therapy to heal.

We need to get this message out to our Canadian Men and help them to stop abusing and get help for their issues. In the States, men and women are realilzing more every day, that if we don't loose our pride, ego and resentment, we will loose our family units completely, and many will never get off the streets or out of poverty. Something To Think About!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!