5 days ago
Anne Marie Hopkins leaves Ottawa Inner City Health after more than 15 years
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Anne Marie Hopkins will become Cornerstone Housing for Women's new executive director on Monday, leaving Ottawa Inner City Health after more than 15 years.
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Hopkins has been the director of operations for OICH for more than three years. Previously, she was a senior manager at the organization for more than seven years and an administrative coordinator for four years.
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Cornerstone, the first women-only shelter in Ottawa, provides emergency and supportive shelter to hundreds of women and gender diverse individuals across the city. The organization also provides free meals to people in need and has an outreach program to connect women to services and peer support.
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It is also an Anglican community ministry and works with the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa to provide spiritual care to women of all faiths or no faith.
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'I feel really good and really, really excited. I'm so happy it's finally here,' Hopkins said.
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'It's been a while of planning and organizing things … I've been with Inner City Health for 15 years, and I've loved all of it, but I was really looking for a change.'
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Hopkins said she was feeling 'a huge range of emotions,' but was ready to hit the ground running at Cornerstone.
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'I plan on being (at Cornerstone) for a long time and really just want to focus on bringing stabilization after they've had so much growth, building up and stabilizing operations. They have the city's largest shelter for women now and they've been working incredibly hard to stabilize that program,' she said.
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'That's going to be my role for the first year: stabilizing and building up capacity in the team. And community outreach and advocating, things like that.'
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But, most importantly, Hopkins said she aimed to improve the lives of women and gender-diverse people experiencing homelessness.
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'Women and gender-diverse individuals are an incredibly underserved subpopulation of homeless people in Ottawa. We are always looking to bolstering and improving supports that vulnerable women and gender diverse individuals have,' she said.
