Legacy of the Vancouver Olympics

By John Weaver, in Vancouver for AFP Published: 12:58PM GMT twenty-six February 2010

People accumulate to see the Olympic flame outward the Main Press Center in Vancouver. Photo: AFP/SAEED KHAN

Programmes have been put in place to assistance the city"s disadvantaged, together with a seminar set up to set up podiums for the award winners and an operation to supply the winners" bouquets.

Even the lost and found claims centre is being used to give inner-city residents jobs and uninformed prospects - and 50,000 tickets are being since afar for Olympic and Paralympic events and ceremonies.

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Margitta Schulz, a florist, teamed up with Jun Strandberg of the non-profit organization Just Beginnings Flowers, that is a flowering plant emporium and floral pattern propagandize for women with barriers to employment, to win the bid to emanate 1,800 bouquets.

Many of the students at the pattern propagandize are recuperating from addiction, withdrawal jail org the sex trade, or are victims of violence.

Strandberg said: "Every time I see them (the bouquets) I feel good honour in what they"re producing here. They"re you do a unequivocally good job."

Speaking about her programme, she said: "It"s good to be means to emanate with such a pleasing thing. It"s a good feeling of fulfilment when they do an agreement for their initial time, when they see what they can create."

The workshop, that non-stop in Nov 2007, has done thousands of wooden equipment for the Games together with podiums, judges" chairs and ski racks and has lerned dozens of people in carpentry skills together with groups from the deprived Downtown Eastside and a organisation of native Australian people.

Many have left on to consequence preparation towards a career in carpentry.

"It"s really gratifying saying the changes in the lives of these people. In a little of them it"s been implausible the approach they have incited their lives around," pronounced Mark Hetherington, physical preparation instructor of the shop.

Another plan is the lost and found claims service, for that the Games" organising committee, called VANOC, engaged a non-profit organisation, the Network of Inner-City Community Services Society (NICCSS).

Hendrik Hoekema, former arch senior manager of NICCSS, pronounced staff had been recruited for the seven-week programme, most of whom face barriers to employment, for e.g. singular mothers incompetent to get day caring or infirm people.

The target is to give them a paid pursuit and learn them new skills in areas such as register carry out to have them some-more employable.

"I have been vacant by how well it has gone. The women have shown most some-more organisational skills than they thought they had and most some-more capability than they gave themselves credit for," Hoekema said.

"I target to yield practice for people so it will be a small thing to do but most small things have a large disproportion to individuals."

VANOC will additionally be donating equipment to deprived communities, together with beds from the Vancouver and Whistler entertainment villages, bureau reserve and small tools.

Some resources will be sole with hopes of raising multiform hundred thousand dollars. Hoekema pronounced the target was to set up improved day caring and urge early childhood preparation in inner-city Vancouver.

Hoekema was additionally concerned in negotiating a understanding on condition that scores of jobs on the Vancouver athletes" encampment site, precision in building a whole work and fifteen million dollars (�9.3 million) in products and services paid for from inner-city suppliers.

Yet an additional bequest of the Games will be that proxy housing units used for athletes and officials will turn permanent affordable housing units via British Colombia.

Margaret Dickson, VANOC"s executive of inclusion, pronounced the amicable initiatives were elemental to Vancouver"s bid for the Games.

"There isn"t a template, a one-size-fits-all resolution but I think the need to so something on the amicable side is right away most some-more piece of the Games," she said.