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WINNIPEG – The West Broadway community officially welcomed new neighbours on April 1, 2026, as Initiatives for Just Communities (IJC) formally launched their new drop-in space at 555 Broadway. The new IJC Winnipeg offices are open Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., offering a drop-in centre, food bank, clothing depot, cooking classes, sewing and beading programs, singing and drumming, and counselling services. Founded nearly 20 years ago by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC)

The following story originally appeared in The Carillon on February 23, written by Svjetlana Mlinarevic. RM of Hanover council has approved a conditional use order that will allow for transitional housing for women in Mitchell. The approval of the conditional use order was granted by council Feb. 11 during a public hearing. The housing is an initiative between Initiatives for Just Communities (IJC) and the department of families’ community living disABILITY services. IJC’s di

The Touchstone drop-in officially opened at 555 Broadway on December 8, 2025, and not a day too soon. The new space is larger, more functional, and thoughtfully designed. At the former Erin St location, the offices and the drop-in overlapped, making programming challenging. “It was too small,” says Lambert Baiden, the drop-in coordinator. “We couldn’t handle any events, and it was overcrowded.” The tables in the staff boardroom doubled as a ping-pong table. If one person want

The following article was written by Shannon Dueck for Steinbach Online on February 20. Council for the Rural Municipality of Hanover has given the green light for a group home to open in Mitchell. Representatives for Initiatives for Just Communities (IJC), also known as El'dad, appeared before Council with the proposal. The organization would like to open a residential home in order to support up to six adult females living with intellectual disabilities. In her proposal to

The following article was written by Svjetlana Mlinarevic for The Carillon on April 5, 2025. Initiatives for Just Communities (IJC) is forming a coalition with other service agencies in the Southeast in order to better serve their clients and Minister of Families Nahanni Fontaine was in attendance on Tuesday to see their work. “One of the reasons the minister is coming out is we’ve been working with a coalition of family services agencies in southeastern Manitoba to advocate

The following article is an excerpt from a piece written in the Winnipeg Free Press on August 22, 2025 by Erik Pindera. It highlights some of the work being done by IJC. Click here to read the full article. It was early in Don Shackel’s career, while working in the mental health and addictions field in northern Ontario, when he met a woman who had given birth to a child with FASD. That started him on a path that has included work with the Interagency FASD Program in Winnipeg