New hopes, new plans and new faces for Windsor Downtown Mission

The giant cathedral-like church echoes the bouncing syllables as Windsor Downtown Mission’s new director of development throws her audience a barrage of fact after fact. The audience is made up of delegates from Leadership Windsor-Essex, who try to pepper questions back with as much interest. But they have a lot to compete with- their tour guide’s insatiable dreaming is what’s keeping her going.

“We sort of are the frontline, we’re the place that people stumble through the door (as a) last resort. Maybe you’ve been turned away from everywhere else, but we don’t turn anyone away. We get you in the door and we help you get to that next step.”

A fitting statement to make immediately after telling the story of a previous guest who is now opening their second sandwich and coffee shop after graduating from the culinary arts program.

Finding fitting statements for every person and every moment helps define Fiona Coughlin, the mission’s new director of development, taking on the job less than three months ago. A tour through the building is just one of her daily tasks where this is necessary. The quotes drop left and right as she moves purposefully, with the occasional nervous giggle.

“We’re going to renovate the whole thing,” she explains, pointing out the enormous space sitting unused. Dormitories will be installed for both genders, with beds to soon be shipped in for guests who need to spend the night. There will even be dorms for families who may have been recently evicted from their homes. “If a family is in a crisis situation, it can tear them apart. We can’t have children on the streets, so we’re here to give them a place to go to.”

The subject of potential family upheaval is a special concern for Coughlin, who still vividly recalls being a single mom just barely out of high school. Working in a Hallmark store with her infant son colouring behind the cash register, she credits a strong sense of family at both home and work that helped her pull through. It’s no wonder then that she looks to bring the same qualities to the Mission.

“I feel like we’re all brothers and sisters on the same journey. A lot of us experience very similar things and we’re all fighting battles… I feel a sense of responsibility towards the community, towards everyone that’s in our mission. They’re our guests, but they’re also our friends and colleagues,” said Coughlin.

The group she’s guiding moves downstairs and enters a narrow hallway, where she rattles off future plans while pointing out the rooms they pass. The kitchen provides culinary arts students the chance to find work in the hospitality sector. The food bank that used to be open only to people once every three months, is soon to be available once a month. For this, contact with various donors needs to be made to keep up with the demand, which Coughlin says takes up the majority of her day.

Sitting at her work space with a poem entitled “If I had to live my life over again, I’d make more mistakes next time” and a mini-figurine of Doctor Who for inspiration, please and thank yous are sent out to build relations with everybody anywhere. And what else does her day involve? Chestnuts. Soup mix. Article printouts. Nine skids of crackers coming in from Toronto. Facebook. And finding contacts for the upcoming Coldest Night Walk needs to be done too.

And speaking of fundraising, Coughlin remembers being involved in it from the very beginning. Growing up in Kitchener, her dad was a hospital administrator who regularly hosted golf tournaments and radio drives to raise funds. Repeatedly tagging along with him soon gave her an incentive of her own and she became the chair of the youth committee in college. Pulling through business administration at the time, she decided to “use her business powers for good instead of evil.” That’s where non-profit sector fundraising came in.

But Coughlin’s future ambitions are still ahead for her tourists. The next stop calls for a visit to the meal room. On a normal day the room is packed with over 250 people and she says she has to get to know everyone. Some of the visitors even come solely to socialize, to get “support for their souls and spirits.”

Part of doing that is showing that it’s not an “us and them” mentality, with fundraisers only the elite can afford. The recent trivia night they hosted was open to the public. As Coughlin says, by creating events that would be inaccessible to the community, what kind of message would you be sending to your own guys?

And another way to make an event accessible for the public is to get the public involved. Coughlin’s sense of responsibility is praised by Angela Matei, the mission’s data clerk. Matei also applauds Coughlin’s creative backing behind the trivia night, which helped raise $11,000.

“Her planning of every event is huge… everybody knows you do this or (that), she has on a schedule everybody’s job. She knows where to put people and (how to) keep them busy,” said Matei.

And to send that point home, Coughlin warns Leadership Windsor-Essex they might end up finishing their tour sorting out donated clothes. That is, after she shows them the new hair salon upstairs. And here her creative juices begin to really flow as her speech becomes even more excited and her plans begin to topple all over each other. That, she says, is the benefit of working in the non-profit sector- not a lot of red tape. Here, anything can happen.

“I hope that the mission inspires me to come up with creative solutions. I would love to be the person (who) figures out the solution to poverty and I know that’s a crazy dream… some researchers are looking to cure cancer, we’re looking to cure poverty. How do you do that? We keep working on it and trying new methods and I feel like we can do it,” said Coughlin.

And so whether it’s new hair salons, culinary students going to open their own restaurants, or even something as simple as finding chestnuts for the next Christmas fundraiser, poverty alleviation dreams keep growing. They might even be substantial one day. They certainly already are for Windsor.