Estevan residents have a lot of reasons to be proud of their community. We could dedicate a series of columns and editorials to the things that make this city and this region great, and still not manage to list all of them.
An agency that should be a source of pride for all of us is observing a big milestone later this month. The Envision Counselling and Support Centre is celebrating 25 years in the community. They’re going to bring in retired NHL all-star Theoren Fleury to speak at a workshop in Weyburn on May 15, and at a luncheon in Estevan the following day.
This anniversary, though, is a chance to reflect on what Envision has meant to so many.
It’s one of those organizations that might be easy to take for granted until you actually need its services. And when you actually consider how far it has come, how much it has grown, the services that it provides and the program it now offers, it’s easy to grasp why we should be proud of Envision.
This is an organization that had humble beginnings in Estevan in 1994, when it was known as the Violence Intervention Program (VIP). Another organization, the Alternatives to Violence (ATV), was operating out of Weyburn.
Patt Lenover-Adams wasn’t the first executive director of VIP, but you could be forgiven for thinking that she was always in that role for the entirety of its first 20 years. After all, she moved into that post a few months after it started, and she held that role until she retired in 2014.
It was during that time that Envision experienced much of its growth, with new and diverse programs being offered. There was a name change for both VIP and ATV to Envision years ago, which reflected that growth in programming.
Offices were opened in Oxbow and Carlyle, giving Envision an even greater presence in southeast Saskatchewan, and allowing them to bring programs to people in rural communities.
For many years, one of the services most closely associated with Envision was its 24-hour support line for victims of abuse. At one point, it was a very popular service for the agency. It made a big difference in the lives of people who called in.
They could anonymously explain their problem to an empathetic person and find out how Envision could help them.
A changing world resulted in Envision discontinuing the line last year. In this modern world, with young people having such a strong understanding of Internet searches and being able to access information so quickly, the support line was seeing its call volumes dwindle from its peak of 50 calls per month more than a decade ago, to around 70 calls per year for all of 2017.
It was asking too much to keep the support line operating when it was taken care of by volunteers. While the volunteers were generally unwavering in their dedication, it meant having one person on-call, and another person serving as a back-up, when there would be just a couple of calls a week on average.
Still, that support line was something to be proud of, and it helped so many people over the years by providing a referral to services, or just by supplying a listening ear.
You might not have used Envision’s services at some point in the last 25 years. But there’s a good chance that someone you know has turned to that agency for assistance. And you likely didn’t know that they were seeking assistance from Envision.
Perhaps the truest measure of an organization is the number of people it has served, and the level of service it provides to its clients. This is where Envision scores so well.
We can talk about the growth in client base, programs and the number of offices in rural communities, but in the end, it’s the people that matter most.
And that’s why it’s important to be thankful that we have an organization like Envision in the community.
