Jeanine Ross is on a mission to improve peoples' lives and give others the chance to succeed. She is deeply involved in the community helping out with everything from the city's sports teams, to supporting those facing addictions, supporting youth and so much more.
"I've lived in Quesnel for coming up on three years in April," she told The Observer. "You can come from a bigger city, if you're social you can meet people and you can branch out and give back right away."
She works as a program manager at Axis Family Resources in Quesnel where she works with adults and youth.
"I'm basically a hub and I branch people out and connect them," she said. She gets the youth engaged in the community, teaches daily living skills, social skills and sets people up with appointments for things like doctors, dentists and other resources they may need.
"I got into it in 2016 after I graduated university in Vancouver and I worked for a company for six years down there with adults. And the adults were really challenging, I worked through the corrections branch so adults with criminal records," she said. She wanted to change career paths to work with youths because she said adults can be very stuck in their ways. "Youth, if you mentor, they change and you can see them get there own goals."
"The youth are our future and the way our economy and government are going we need more people in these roles to show youth that they can make a difference long-term because I was once a youth and I didn't feel that I had enough in me to make a difference," Ross said. "There was no one that really believed in me or trained me so I want to give that back to the community."
Ross said she's had opportunities to work in more profitable areas but she described what she does as heart work and said it's more valuable to her to be able to truly help people.
She has five diplomas that helped her get into the field of supporting others: community support work, addictions and counselling, Educational assistant, Indigenous studies and personal support.
"In 2011 I was homeless on the streets of Squamish and a social worker believed in me. And then another group of people believed in me and they just mentored me as an adult," she said. "And then I had a passion for helping others and that's where everything else came." She explained that she feels she is on this Earth to help others and that is her passion.
She said moving to Quesnel she fit in right away and it was nice because of her diversity as a queer Indigenous woman. "It's hard to fit in in places and Quesnel was just like a puzzle piece, I just fit in right away and I've never looked back."
Ross also cares for three dogs including one French bulldog that came to Canada from Ukraine at the start of the war.
"When she came to Canada she only knew Ukrainian so I had to teach her English," Ross said. "So she had a hard time adjusting to Canada and the weather here." Ross didn't set out to find a Ukrainian dog, she was simply looking for a specific breed and that's the dog she happened to find.
During the pandemic Ross started Recovery Canada.
"I started that in 2019 at the start of COVID because people in 12-step meetings, people in other forms of recovery like SMART recovery or cultural recovery. All these connections were shut down for them. All of a sudden we couldn't meet in person for 12-step meetings," Ross said. "So I started an online forum that 13,000 members. It's run by myself and five admins across Canada. It's helping people stay clean and sober and get into treatment, get into detox, get back into their roles."
Ross said her phone can ring at any given time or she can get a text, email, message or any other form of communication from someone reaching out to get support with addictions and recovery. She said sometimes it's the parent or loved one of someone facing an addiction who want to know how they can best support their family member.
She also offers services and support to Quesnel's unhoused population including free haircuts, "where I'm needed I suit up and I show up," Ross said.
There is one thing that is extremely difficult about everything she does for the community.
"The hardest part for me is when someone in the community passes away from an overdose," she said. "(when) it could be prevented and our community doesn't have the resources to help it."
