People telling stories of their lived experiences of homelessness can be helpful and cathartic, but action is what’s really needed to actually ease their burden.

That was the message on Monday as the Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition kicked off the 18th annual Poverty and Homelessness Action Week with a gathering at the end of Hanson Street.

“People with lived experiences have been sharing the burden a long time of telling their stories and have gone blue in the face telling us what the solutions are, and the knowledge is there,” said coalition co-chair Joline Beauregard.

“It’s time to move past awareness into taking action.”

The action week was created to raise awareness and promote action to end poverty and homelessness by bringing together community groups, governmental organizations and non-profits for brainstorming sessions and networking events.

This year’s theme is “What’s on the Line: Actions to End Poverty and Homelessness in the Yukon”. It calls for work to be done in the areas of food, income, housing and access to services.

“We want to highlight the urgency of these issues, and also the many ways that we can all work together to not only alleviate the impacts of poverty and homelessness, but actually end it here in the Yukon,” coalition executive director Kristina Craig said in a Monday press release.

Events will be running until Friday. They include an input session on the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, a luncheon to discuss food security, a donation and discount program for winter jackets at Coast Mountain Sports, and other meals and events at local schools.

The coalition press release highlighted challenges such as the fact that the livable wage has recently increased in Whitehorse to $21.04 per hour, and that recent point-in-time counts found 197 people experiencing homelessness in Whitehorse in a 24-hour period.

At the announcement on Hanson Street, Craig said that with the small population in the Yukon, the territory is well-resourced to take on these issues, but is also in some ways “over-governed.

“And some of that has led to systems that aren’t making sense for people,” she said.

This, in turn, leads to people being left out, explained Ulrike Wohlfarth Levins, who shared her own experiences at the event on Hanson Street.

“We have many systems in place,” Levins said. “But there’s still huge, huge gaps, as I found out for myself.”

Since finding secure housing, Levins has worked to help those trapped in the cycle of addiction and homelessness.

“I believe with my whole heart that if we work together as a community that we can end homelessness, that we can make a huge dent in addictions,” Levins said. “But it does take a community to do that.”

Jack Bogaard, one of the Anti-Poverty Coalition’s directors, echoed this sentiment after explaining that this past week, he had been out counting how many people are living in tents 18 years after the first of these action weeks.

He counted 47 tents in Whitehorse last week.

“I thought maybe, by 18 years, we would have a lot of things resolved,” Bogaard said.

He encouraged those in attendance to keep it simple and take the opportunity this week to each go out and focus on taking on one piece of the problem.

“It’s easy to say, we’ve got this problem and this problem; nothing ever gets resolved,” Bogaard said.

Events will be held all week, but gently used jackets and outerwear will be accepted at Coast Mountain Sports in exchange for $50 off new gear until Oct. 31.