Celebrating the quiet heroes in our communities

Trigger warning: This article contains mentions of suicide.

They come from all walks of life and different parts of the world. They carry with them a rich tapestry of personal experiences and they all pursue the same goal: to improve the lives of the people in their community, especially the vulnerable and the marginalized.

They’re social services professionals, whose unfailing dedication has transformed lives. And more than a decade ago, a married couple—Raksha M. Bhayana and Madan M. Bhayana—launched a family foundation expressly to thank these unsung heroes

When Raksha came to Canada from New Delhi, she began her career as a therapist working with children who were experiencing serious difficulties at school, at home and in the community. It was a pressure-filled job and came with an enormous cost.

The kind of pressure we faced and the toll it took, it was like a pounding of your emotions, says Raksha. But people who didn’t work in the field had no idea, she explains.

It was these early experiences that planted the seed for what eventually became the Bhayana Family Foundation . The foundation’s mission, in partnership with The United Way, is to recognize excellence in the non-profit social services sector and to celebrate the leaders and front-line workers, without whom many essential community programs would not be possible.

Founded in 2006, around 1,000 dedicated social service professionals have been recognized for their leadership and innovation. Awards are given in every other career field, Raksha says, but front-line, professional social service workers typically go unrecognized.

They go above and beyond almost every day. When some of these people get recognized, they cry because it’s never happened before, says Raksha, who hopes to expand her program and eventually create a national day of recognition for the sector.

From coast to coast to coast, professionals like Bev Cadham, co-executive director of the Halifax-Dartmouth branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA); Maryamm Himid, a former coordinator at Toronto’s Parkdale Activity-Recreation Centre   (PARC) and Kimberly Barwich, director of Community Programs at Burnaby Neighbourhood House in B.C., are being recognized for their decades of tireless work.

Sometimes I just need a reprieve

Cadham says she is humbled and honoured by being presented an award from the foundation, which came with a $1,000 prize.

The award itself is about community. There’s not a whole lot of awards focused on this and the significant impact that has, she says.

The CMHA, where Cadham works, provides social support programs for marginalized adults, many of whom live with mental health challenges. At the Halifax-Dartmouth branch, community members have access to a wide variety of services such as food and security assistance, transportation and housing needs. The branch also offers informal social support programs for socially-isolated adults living with mental illness as well as a social club for adults experiencing mental illness.

Keeping programs alive while running a non-profit day-to-day is not easy. Cadham is one of only two full-time staffers who must also fundraise some 40 percent of the organization’s budget. And the search for new money never ends. Most grants are finite, earmarked for specific program uses that do not go toward operation costs, and have expiry dates. This often means when the grant is done, so is the program it supported.

Every area in mental health and addiction is underfunded, says Cadham. There’s also a huge waitlist for psychiatrists and getting into the formal health system, she adds.

It’s an issue highlighted in a report by the Globe and Mail , which found half of all Canadians live in areas where the number of psychiatrists per person falls below the recommended ratio from the Canadian Psychiatric Association. Another 2.3 million Canadians have no permanent psychiatrists at all.

Often times it’s in crisis mode that people end up getting the services they need that they did not get on a regular basis, says Cadham.

She knows firsthand how important access to help is: her son Shaymus Cadham-Higgins died by suicide in 2017.

Shaymus had learning challenges, which appeared at a very early age. These were accompanied by severe anxiety, which worsened with age, and ADHD that was undiagnosed until much later in his life. He was a diligent worker, Cadham says, but school could be daunting at times. Still, with a lot of advocating from the “amazing” faculty at the Nova Scotia Community College and many support systems in place, he graduated.

Although he received some counselling, he didn’t always go despite his best efforts, and he remained on a public health care waitlist for help.

There came a day, however, when he’d had enough. He took a moment where I think he just didn’t want to fight anymore. It was just too exhausting, Cadham says.

Now, Cadham is on a mission to raise awareness about the importance of taking care of one’s mental health and she wants to send a message to people struggling that nobody should have to suffer alone. She’s taking the award money she received from the foundation to start a scholarship in her son’s honour, which will focus on youths like Shaymus who grapple with mental health challenges and want to go back to school.

Recipients would use the money toward services they need to help them with any emotional and academic challenges, such as counselling or life coach support.

He is guiding me from a different dimension now, Cadham says.

“We share their pains and their joys”

Maryamm Himid is another recipient of a Bhayana Foundation leadership award. A former program coordinator at Toronto’s PARC, Himid and a small team worked with refugees, newcomers and people experiencing homelessness—many of whom are also socially isolated and/or in poor health. They come from as far away as Tibet and South Asia and as close to home as nearby Indigenous communities, Himid says.

Staff members take them to mental health appointments and pharmacy visits, and accompany them to open bank accounts. They connect people with food banks and outreach programs and often spend their own money to help clients.

There are many processes people don’t know how to navigate, especially if they’re newcomers, says Himid. When patients go to appointments alone, they might also face prejudices and harassment, she adds. Helping clients overcome barriers within the system is a core function of Himid’s former team.

But with only half a dozen staff members, the work is beyond challenging.

“Our workers don’t just accompany people, but we also follow up and visit when possible. We bring coffee, tea, sit down, talk with them,” says Himid, who adds that staff will sometimes bring clothes for newcomers when it is cold.

“We work with people who’ve gone through so much. We share their pains and their joys.”

The power of people can lift a whole community

Kimberly Barwich fell into social service work by chance when an opportunity to work with kids in a junior leadership program opened up in her 20s. She was amazed at how much she enjoyed the work, and says it changed the trajectory of her career toward doing something meaningful.

For more than 20 years, Barwich has been building a community, program by program, in Burnaby, B.C. Hired as Burnaby Neighbourhood House’s first staff member, Barwich has turned the organization into a large community hub with full- and part-time staff of 110 and some 800 volunteers.

Under Barwich’s leadership, it offers afterschool and family programs, childcare centres, literacy and numeracy programs, youth leadership courses, senior outreach programs and community kitchens.

Our mission is to make our neighbourhoods better places to live and work through the power of people. It’s very much about the community coming together, seeing what the needs are and giving back, says Barwich, a winner of the foundation’s Leadership Award.

Watching the volunteers find a place where they can give back is amazing she says.

But none of this would be possible without Barwich and her team’s constant efforts to find funding and sponsors. It’s hard to have to justify the work all the time and prove it’s important, she says. Our social safety net is not strong enough, wide enough and not complete enough.

For Barwich, partnerships with sponsors and other organizations are essential to their work. We can’t do it without each other, she says.

It’s also why recognizing the work being done within the sector is so important to Raksha: what they provide is value beyond money, she says. They help people transform their lives. That’s their whole raison d’être.

If this story has moved you to want to take action, you can sign the Bhayana Family Foundation’s petition to create a national Day of Recognition for the non-profit sector.