Director General

Meet Matthew Pearce: Director General of the Old Brewery Mission

Where were you before the Mission?

Most of my career has been in the not for profit sector. I figured out early on in my professional life that since I was going to have to spend many hours a week toiling away it might as well be in the pursuit in something bigger than myself. I really value knowing that through my work I am doing something that stands a decent chance of making a positive difference.

For a long time I worked in the field of international development. International development is often basically local development that happens to take place in communities outside Canada. What I am now doing at the Old Brewery Mission is still community development, without the word “international” attached to it.

Why work for the Mission?

I was interested in the locally based dimension of the Mission and I wanted to work with an organization that would connect me to the heart of Montreal. The Old Brewery Mission really is a Montreal phenomenon.

What really attracted me was learning of the new path the OBM has been on the last few years. I was really fascinated to find out that the Mission was working to not only soothe homelessness but to solve homelessness. I thought to myself, “Now this is something I can get excited about!”

What were some of your impressions of the Mission?

My first impression was of an organization enthusiastic about what it was doing. A lot of people might think that, because we deal with the homeless population, that there must be a lot of misery at the Mission. The reality is just the opposite. The Mission is a place of enthusiasm and hope. We are an organization moving forward and we are working on something tangible.
When I worked in international development, our goal was that at some point in the future things would be better and that society would change.

Rarely would I see a clear and distinct difference relative to the objectives of the organization I worked for. Here at the Mission we see change every day. It’s amazing to watch someone who has been living on the streets sign up for one of our transitional programs and start to change their lives around. We can see the transformation in our clients in a matter of months, weeks and sometimes days.

I also was impressed to note that the Mission works with homeless women as well as men. I do not think this is very well understood in Montreal. In fact, besides being the largest shelter for men in Quebec, the Old Brewery Mission is the largest shelter service for homeless women in Canada.

What are some of the challenges of being the Director General at the Old Brewery Mission?

The Old Brewery Mission is a many faceted organization. We have achieved a lot in the last few years, but there is still work to be done if we are to meet our long term goal of permanently reducing homelessness in Montreal. On a practical level, we need more trained counsellors and more skilled personnel on the ground who can help our clients in their transition from homelessness to a better place. We also need to further develop the social housing element of our mission because helping our clients into secure permanent, stable and affordable housing is our ultimate goal.

In order to meet these challenges, the provincial government must do its part and step up to provide us with adequate financial support for our emergency services. Currently 50% of our annual revenues come from donors and 50% comes from the provincial government. To compare, Toronto shelters receive 100% of their funding from their government. This means that they are not required to expend all the energy we do on fundraising. Thankfully, Montrealers appreciate the work that we do and they are very generous. We hope that their example will prompt our government to appreciate its obligation to assist in resolving the extreme hardships of our most excluded citizens.

If we could secure reliable funding for our shelters, we could then invest the money we receive from our private donors to our transitional facilities and long term housing initiatives. Currently, we fund these important services solely with donations.

How do you see the Mission developing in the next five years?

The natural progression of the Old Brewery Mission will be to play a larger role in social housing either on our own or in partnership with other social housing initiatives in Montreal. I really believe that this is fundamental if we are to have a real impact on the lives of our clients. The future of homelessness reduction is not in shelters but in housing.