Eva's Initiatives

About Eva's Initiatives:

Eva's Initiatives (Eva's) provides safe shelter, training, counselling, and a variety of other programs and services to help homeless and at-risk youth. Eva's operates three specialized shelters, which can house up to 114 youth, aged 16–24, each night. Eva's Place is a 32-bed emergency shelter that is often the first stop for youth who become homeless. It is home to the groundbreaking Family Reconnect Program that focuses on homelessness prevention. In 2014, over 300 youth and family members accessed the Family Reconnect Program services, resulting in 24 youth moving out of the shelter system back into the family home. Eva's Satellite is a 32-bed shelter that caters to youth with substance use issues. Its innovative programming is based on a harm reduction model and it is the only shelter of its kind in Canada. Eva's Phoenix is a transitional housing and training facility for youth for up to one year. In 2014, 78 youth moved into Eva's Phoenix, which had a 97% occupancy rate.

In 2014 Eva's provided training and education programs, employment and interview preparation, life skills training and ongoing counselling to over 1,750 clients. It also provided harm reduction supports, family counselling, safe shelter, transitional housing and emergency support to 2,164 residents.

Eva's is campaigning to raise $11.2 million to renovate its 60 Brant Street location. This campaign will help at-risk youth get job training, schooling and housing so they can transition to independent living.

Financial Review:

With Eva's capital campaign, 2015 donations of $8.4 million make Eva's a "big-cap" charity. Donation support has increased 4-fold since 2013. With this campaign, administrative costs have fallen to 7% of revenues and fundraising costs are 9% of donations. These overhead ratios are all well within Ci's reasonable range. Eva's 2015 surplus of $5 million is banked in funding reserves to pay for the renovations. Funding reserves are $8.4 million.