Welcome to the Vancouver Community Deathcare Project
Creating events and resources to support grief, love, and connection.
About the Project
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) community contend with death and dying all the time, which has been compounded by two ongoing public health emergencies: the drug-poisoning crisis and COVID-19. Despite the increased frequency of deaths, there is little dignity, preparation or support offered around death and dying. The Community Death Care Project intends to create opportunities for thoughtful and engaged discussion and information sharing around death and dying, especially for vulnerable seniors in the DTES, through information sessions, creative arts based hands-on activities, and conversation circles.
All programs and activities will be delivered out of Carnegie Community Centre. As a City of Vancouver facility, Carnegie Community Centre has COVID-19 safety planning in every program and service we provide. This includes, but is not limited to socially distanced layouts for program space set up, providing masks and hand hygiene supplies during all in person programs, a comfortable welcoming environment for real space activities and support for online opportunities through our program partner the Capliano University Adult Learning Centre.
Offering activities online and in real space will allow seniors and other members of the DTES community to choose what is the best fit for themselves based on their own feelings of safety and comfort. The project intends to integrate accessible features to the virtual activities, on the program website and for the in person activities over the course of the program. Our virtual programming will provide translation in languages in addition to spoken English, auto generated closed captioning in English, and creation of transcripts and audio recordings for Seniors whose lives may include barriers to accessing virtual activities.
This program is co-developed and facilitated by the Carnegie Community Centre and Vancouver Public Library.