Our Granville Street team was recently awarded a Downtown “Emerging Leader” Award from the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association. Street Team manager, Amanda accepted the award alongside some of the team members on September 8th, 2022.
It was such an honour to receive this recognition from one of the original supporters of the team and in the company of so many esteemed downtown Vancouver Stakeholders. You can read the speech she delivered to the crowd at the paradox hotel below.
“Good evening everyone and thank you. We are so excited to receive this award. My name is Amanda and I am the Granville Street Team Manager for Good Night Out Vancouver.
“Thank you to the DownTown Business Improvement Association for this award. It is such an honour to have this recognition from one of the original organizations at the table when this team started 5 years ago. This team was started as an intervention to help curb disorder in the GED and to support the safety of young women and LGBTA2SIA+ patrons who are out enjoying the GED. At the time of launch, we were the first team with a nightlife mandate in North America. Some of you may work in venues with staff that affectionately call us the pinks (or so we hope it's affectionately)
Although our organization has tripled its reach over the pandemic, hosting over 70 workshops on safety in nightlife and hospitality in 2021, we don't often capture the attention of an audience such as this, so we do use the opportunity to offer an important reminder.
This work continues to be, for better or for worse, more important than ever. The central business district, the neighbourhood we are all sitting in this afternoon is the area of Vancouver with the highest rates of sexual assault in the city. It was recently announced that the sexual assault rate in Canada is the highest it has been in 16 years.
Despite this reality, and despite being recognized here today, this team is drastically underfunded. In our 7 years of operation, we have yet to start a fiscal year with enough money to run the team uninterrupted. Even this year, after a post covid restart that has increased helping more people on weekends than previous years, it is likely we will have to pause services through the winter due to lack of money.
Enough being a downer for now. To wrap up, we of course want to thank our amazing team. This team works in the thick of the GED on the weekends from Midnight to 4am. They give up their weekends to support safety, and have connected with well over 5000 people since the team's inception.
It is hard to come up with words to describe the gratitude we have for this team, so we will use a quote that was found buried in the data collected from the Team in August:
“You should have signs over your heads that say HEROES.”
We are sticking around, if you want to chat more, please come find us in pink. “
Did you know?
The Granville Street Team works Friday and Saturday nights, Midnight to 4 am?
They patrol Granville, from Robson to Drake and connect with around 300 people a month.
Learn more about the team here.
