Aid group to ex-gang members seeks new leaders
SASKATOON, SK—STR8 Up, a grassroots organization that helps Saskatchewan Aboriginals break free of gangs, may not survive the decision of the Catholic priest—its main driving force and visionary—to step down.
André Poilièvre plans to ease himself out as coordinator starting this summer.
“My health is not all that bad but it’s not all that good,” says Poilièvre, who is 77. “I’m going to be out of the picture except for making presentations. I still do all the jail work and the young offenders work. I don’t how long I’ll be able to do that.”
As for STR8 Up’s future without him, he says, “I don’t know. We have hired four of our members part-time and we’re training them. We’ll see where it goes. It might die.”
Bobby Henry, a PhD candidate in native studies at the University of Saskatchewan, is more hopeful.
“Can anybody be André? No, because he has traits that nobody else has,” he says. “Can there be people who carry on his vision? Yes, as long as they understand why he ventured in this direction. And there are leaders right now within the program who can step in.”
STR8 Up began about 12 years ago. Poilièvre had just retired as a chaplain at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre when two men asked him for help in getting out of a gang.
“I said, ‘I sure as heck don’t know how to do it either but let’s go for it,’” he says. “The organization developed from them. Nobody sat around a table designing strategies and tactics and objectives and all that stuff. It just kind of grew.”
STR8 Up has now helped more than 200 people leave their gang lifestyles, while urging kids to stay away from gangs. The organization has about 55 active members. Some lead workshops and make presentations in schools and on reserves, as well as to service providers and university students.
One key component STR8 Up encourages ex-gang members to rely on in turning their lives around are their personal “spiritual values.”
“They’re not saying, ‘Christianity is the one way out of this.’ There’s multiple ways,” says Henry. “What they’re trying to do is create a broader social network for the guys, to move them outside of who their network is right now.”
“I remember,” says Poilièvre, “talking to the bishop [Donald Bolen]. I said, ‘STR8 Up is not about conversion, it’s about transformation.’ And his response—he surprised me a little bit—was, ‘You’re in good company. That’s what Jesus was all about.’”
Out of a desire to guard its grassroots, members-first approach, only now is STR8 Up becoming more professional—something Poilièvre admits was “not my thing.” It was recently incorporated as a non-profit organization, and it has received two grants totaling $100,000 to undertake planning and research, and to develop a five-year plan.
Yet for all its limitations, Henry says STR8 Up has had “a lot of success” in helping ex-gang members at least begin the journey to a transformed life.
“If people who are gang-related and whose crimes have all been violent or hyper-violent, commit a breach and steal because they don’t have any food,” he asks, “is it not a success in and of itself to have moved them out of that violence?”
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