CSS honours Quinn's advocacy work

Inner-city woman gives a hand to prostitutes

By RAMON GONZALEZ
WCR Staff Writer
Edmonton

In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s she spent 13 years educating Albertans on the causes of underdevelopment and encouraging support for the poor of the Third World as leader of the Alberta branch of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace.

And for most of the past decade she has been fighting poverty and prostitution in the McCauley area, where she and her family have lived since 1976.

People love her. Pimps and johns don't. She confronts them and makes them pay. Quinn is the founder of the so-called johns school, where johns pay $400 tuition to learn about the consequences of their actions on the community and the prostitutes they exploit.

For her commitment and dedication, Quinn was awarded the Msgr. Bill Irwin Award of Excellence at Catholic Social Services' 40th annual meeting at MacDonald Hotel June 14. Some 300 CSS staff and volunteers attended the meeting and gave Quinn a standing ovation.

The mother of two is not foreign to public recognition, having also received the YWCA Women of Distinction award and the City of Edmonton's Salute to Excellence award.

Created in honour of the founder of Catholic Social Services, the Msgr. Bill Irwin Award is given annually to an organization or individual that has made an exceptional contribution to the well- being of the community or that has demonstrated the highest standards of excellence in a human service field.

The award was given to Quinn by Irwin as well as by CSS chief executive officer Chris Leung and incoming CSS board chair Casey O'Byrne.

"I'm very happy, honoured and a bit embarrassed," Quinn told the WCR following the award ceremony. "I think this is a recognition of the work of many people. I just had the opportunity to work with good leaders and good mentors."

O'Byrne praised Quinn's achievements, calling her a "tireless advocate for the rights, safety and personal dignity of children, women and men involved in prostitution."

"What keeps me going is to see the power of what can happen when some people get together with a dream, roll up their sleeves and start working on it." - Kathleen Quinn

Quinn has been active in social justice work since completing her bachelor in linguistics at the University of Calgary in 1973. She spent five months in Sierra Leone in West Africa with Canadian Crossroads and continued working as a volunteer with the organization upon her return to Canada.

In 1974 she was hired by the Calgary Learning Centre and two years later, in 1976, she moved to Edmonton's inner city to join a lay community of the Scarboro Mission Society.

She served as animator for CCODP from 1978 to 1991.

Quinn and her family have been active in the McCauley neighbourhood since she moved there over 25 years ago. She has participated in both the neighbourhood community league and continues to be an active contributor to the Boyle McCauley News.

"But perhaps Quinn's greatest passion is her commitment to help eradicate the exploitation of people in prostitution," O'Byrne said. "Living and raising a family in the Boyle McCauley neighbourhood, the issue was literally right outside her front door."

Quinn took a leadership role in establishing Communities for Changing Prostitution. Soon her concern extended to concern for the children and women violated through prostitution. She served as a volunteer on Edmonton's Safer Cities Committee and the Avenue of Nations Crime and Safety Committee.

She helped to establish the Prostitution Offender Program and now coordinates that program and is executive director of the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton, which, among other things, educate johns on the consequences of their actions.

Money to run the program comes from the johns themselves. If they are caught by police, they are given two choices: defend themselves through the courts or pay $400 to attend john school. Some 40 per cent of that money is used to provide healing to victims of prostitution and to address the number one cause of prostitution - poverty. "We help the women and their families to get out of prostitution and into healthier lives," Quinn said.

Quinn, a member of CSS' family service advisory committee since 1996, has also served on the provincial working group on prostitution and continues to serve as a member of the Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution steering committee.

What keeps her going? "What keeps me going is to see the power of what can happen when some people get together with a dream, roll up their sleeves and start working on it. That's very energizing. Each obstacle can become an opportunity to learn."

CSS president Al Pierog said Quinn is well deserving of the award because "She didn't run away from the problems in the McCauley area. She faced them head on."

At the annual meeting, CSS also handed 2002 outstanding volunteer awards to Dave Dowler, Roger and Trish Evert, Barbara Garnett, Kathy Kolthammer and Patricia O'Brien.

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