Healing Hands on Struggle Street 

Our Vision:  

The Matthew Talbot Centre is a community of volunteers sharing their time, talents and experience. Reaching out to those living on Struggle Street, we are present with them, offering experiences of belonging and healing through healing hands and listening ears. 

Our Mission: 

The Matt Talbot Centre, a volunteer based outreach organization, sees the complex problem of Struggle Street as a “cancer of the emotions” that eats away at a person’s happiness, joy, and hope. Ordinary people are sucked into Struggle Street when they are deprived of basic emotional needs like love, acceptance, belonging, and achievement. So their struggle is more around emotional isolation, abandonment and marginalization rather than not having money to buy the next loaf of bread. They are from a variety of social situations, from broken homes, abused children, youth unable to connect with parents, women who are victims of domestic violence, depressed single men and women. They struggle in life…feeling lonely … feeling isolated ... feeling rejected …. emotionally scarred. Our unique solution is ‘to the lonely we offer friendship and community ….. to the rejected we offer acceptance…. to the isolated we offer belonging.’  

It is amazing to see the change that takes place in some of the “rough diamonds” from Struggle Street when they come to the Centre and are accepted into family.  They feel they are part of a family of friends that cares for them in a non-preaching, non-judgemental approach. The strong hands of healing soothe their aches and pains…the listening ear gives them a sense of safety and peace in their hearts. That is why they keep on coming back to us for hope and home……….we are simply there for them. Through this friendly presence we seek to foster people’s self worth and dignity in reaching out to them where they are at, accepting them as they are, and welcoming them into our community. That is why they call us their ‘friends on struggle street’. They experience sanctuary within the Matthew Talbot family. 

Treatment Model:

Our present treatment model is based on the musculo-skeletal system carried out by volunteer chiropractors, massage therapists and counsellors.

Our Guiding Principles: 

• Foster people’s self worth and dignity;
• Reach out to people where they are at, accepting them as they are and welcoming them into our community;
• Stand in solidarity with, and offer hope to, those who experience isolation, loneliness and alienation;
• Model a more just, Christian and humane society.