Canadian itinerants - passion and compassion

L'Itineraire is a Montreal news magazine whose mandate is to create opportunities for the homeless to make a living through producing and selling the magazine, and not through begging on the streets. It is a magazine rather like the Big Issue in the UK, so that the sellers earn money from each magazine they sell, and can begin to put their lives back together. See also http://www.street-papers.org/

The Groupe L’Itinéraire is an organisation that cares for the homeless and excluded of Montreal. L'Itineraire also provides a cafe, Cafe L’Itineraire, where people can buy a good meal. A group from the academy of management conference went and also bought meals, so we know the quality is nourishing. We paid CAD15 each for a meal but the homeless pay only four dollars, or less if they have no money.

Richard Turgeon, Director of Strategic Development, spoke to us of Groupe L’Itinéraire’s efforts and how it approaches its mission of compassion and support in the Montreal community.

L’Itinéraire’s goal is to educate the public about homelessness and the people who used to be homeless who are now making a living. In doing so, the organization helps to improve the lives of homeless people who are coping with and overcoming alcoholism, drug abuse, and mental disorders.

Richard and his colleagues demonstrated passion for this work, combined with compassion for these people, its clients.

Touring Montreal

Montreal is a nice city for walking round and lots going on. We started the day by slipping in for a quick visit to the Adler art exhibition, where the theme related to business. We got asked to draw self portraits and describe how they related to leadership. Having accidentally wandered into a workshop (Friday) on the relationship between the tango and leadership, it was easy to draw two dancers leading and following.

The conference organised a trip round Montreal businesses,

• a cafe for the homeless and the business that organises the equivalent of the UK's Big Issue magazine, where we ate brunch - 4$ for the itinerant, but we can pay more
  
• an organisation called 'LOVE' (Leave Out ViolencE) that helps kids move away from violence, hassling and bullying, where we photographed ourselves and wrote something relevant on the portraits for a collage
  
• Studio Breathe - a sustainable approach in a place that provides yoga and martial arts, where we practised yoga and got to taste Canadian wine.
  

With practical conference activities like this, business is fun.

Conference

Am in Montreal for Academy of Management conference that starts on Friday. It's an enormous event with thousands of delegates, very American influenced. Each day has half a dozen activities timed for each of three or four sessions in one of four different venues. I'm going to spend today finding out where these venues are.