MACKIE’S PLACE
Have you ever been there at the start of a big vision? Everyone likes a seat at the table when the vision is successfully in action, but have you spent time with those labouring up to the birth?
It’s to witness a few, passionately convinced of the worthiness of their cause and zealously throwing everything they have – time, money, skills, connections, blood, sweat and tears – at it, regardless of immediate cost and reception.
It’s terrifying when you’re in it.
And also euphoric.
It’s a tidal wave of purpose. Afterwards, when the first-fruits are in your arms, you vehemently maintain any cost would have been worth it, so valuable is the reward.
This is Mackie’s Place. Except they are not at the start of the vision, but 7 years in. It’s just that the passion that birthed it has grown, spread and is infecting more people every single time someone – giver or receiver – encounters them.
Mackie’s Place is a contagious hive of radical love focused on a great and glorious purpose: providing youth at risk in Surrey, B.C, with the opportunity to become healthy people and realize their potential through connection in hope-filled communities.
Last year, 19 staff and close to 200 volunteers served more than 500 kids across four sites with over 8,000 nutritious meals and provided a lovely place for them to hang out in safety, find friendship, mentoring, homework help and be reminded of their infinite worth. Crucially, youth at Mackie’s also participate in job skills programs, get work experience and find jobs.
You only have to walk in the doors of Mackie’s Place once to get the “before” and “after” picture. You can tell the new ones: they come in with their heads down. That’s when the “after” kids and volunteers step in. They engage. Include. Share a meal. Play cards. Slowly, but almost certainly, love weaves its way in, and transformation unfolds.
A front row seat to transformation is addictive. It's why Mackie’s Place has the most socially and economically diverse donors and volunteers we have ever seen. And let’s be honest, if you get a spectacularly good pie out of the deal, maybe you’d become a donor too: in some of the most creative fundraising we here at DO Philanthropy have witnessed in a long while, when people donate $200 a month, they become a member of the Mackie’s Place Pie Club, and get a pie delivered monthly to their door, made right at Mackie’s Place.
Most of all, we love that Mackie’s Place is intent on building not a serviced culture of youth, but a serving culture. To the very fibers of our beings, we believe giving to and serving others is the entryway to a blessing of God that can be received in no other way. It thrills us to be journeying with Mackie’s Place as they help unseen kids experience the love of God in ALL its multifaceted richness.