Prince Albert’s first Sanctum 36 Hour Challenge wrapped up last week, leaving participants with sore feet, humbling memories, and a new understanding of what it means to go without basic comforts in the city.
For a day and a half, ten community leaders swapped their offices, uniforms, and titles for donated clothing and a scripted profile based on real stories of people who face homelessness and illness. From early Thursday morning until Friday evening, they walked the streets, navigated closed doors, and tried to find food and shelter while living without money, phones, or transportation.
“It was the amount of walking,” said registered nurse Carolyn Brost Strom, who works in downtown Prince Albert.
“You’d get to one location and realize it was closed, or the person you needed wasn’t there. It gave me a really good grasp on how tough it is for folks on foot to try and make it to appointments, especially without a phone. Time management is almost impossible.”
Brost Strom’s assigned profile was that of a young mother living with HIV and syphilis, whose children were all in foster care. She said wearing donated clothes changed how people treated her on the street.
“Often people didn’t recognize us or just assumed we were on the street. You get treated a little bit differently. Somebody sped past us at a crosswalk; another gave a thumbs down. We only did this for 36 hours, but if you faced that every day, it would get to you.”
For organizers the goal was never to replicate homelessness but to create empathy and spark conversation.
The 36-hour challenge is designed to highlight the many challenges that people living in community are experiencing,” said Katelyn Roberts, co-founder and executive director of Sanctum Care Group.
“By having community leaders participate, we hope they will give a voice to this population, using their platforms to amplify that voice.”
Funds raised by the Prince Albert participants will stay in the city to support the prenatal Outreach Resource Team (PORT) and lay the groundwork for a Sanctum 1.5 care home for at-risk mothers and their babies. Roberts said the expansion is critical to preventing infant apprehensions and reducing the spread of HIV during pregnancy.
The event also revealed some of the unique gaps in Prince Albert compared to other cities.
“In Saskatoon, food is generally fairly available to our community,” Roberts said. “In Prince Albert, participants struggled to gain access to warm, nutritious food. That was a clear difference.”
Despite the challenges, both Roberts and Brost Strom said the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
“The homeless community itself is very welcoming, very kind to their fellow comrades,” Roberts noted. “What participants learned most was how invisible this population often is.”
Brost Strom hopes her participation will remind people of the importance of kindness and compassion.
“These are human beings who have struggles,” she said.
“At the very base of it, anyone can do something simple to not make someone’s day worse. That’s a responsibility of society.”
Sanctum plans to bring the challenge back in future years, alongside its ongoing expansion of services in Prince Albert.
