Hopes up for second Men’s shed

PRINCE GEORGE – The Canadian Mental Health Association has a mens’ shed set up in the VLA and another organization is looking to set up one in the downtown.

And one local therapist wants to bring one into the downtown and has partnered with the Association Advocating for Women and Community, and specifically, Olive’s Branch .. to do that. “I went this is a very good bookends to kind of what’s going on with regards to the olive branch,” explains Brent Goerz, a local mental health clinician. “Because as you know and you might have talked about is much of the stuff that goes on here, right, in order to maintain stability is all programming. And so if a person can then after their stability, go out into the community, meet other members in the community of men, and have an opportunity to just get their hands dirty.”

Goerz has been working with Blythe Roller at Olive’s Branch to sort of massage the idea of what the newest men’s shed will look like.

“So ideally, what I would like to see is just a safe space for people coming into recovery to work with different men around the community and on a volunteer on a volunteer basis where they can organize and find new hobbies, where they can get together with some guys, talk about gay stuff and build stuff and help the community in different ways,” says Blythe Roller, Community Recovery Coordinator.