Raising Funds for Crisis!

The Cause

Distress Centre Calgary (DCC) provides 24 hour crisis support, professional counselling, youth peer support and referrals through 211 and our programs at SORCe – all at no cost. For over 50 years, Distress Centre has served Calgary and Southern Alberta, ensuring everyone has a place to turn in times of crisis. We do not define crisis. We do not judge. Anyone can call us day or night.

Distress Centre Calgary's volunteers are the heart and soul of our agency. And they save lives everyday!

We recruit volunteers from a variety of sources, including youth, immigrants, seniors and first nations, in the knowledge to create volunteer opportunities to broaden a diverse and inclusive base of volunteers to serve Calgary's diverse population.

The Roberts Model of Crisis Intervention provides a multistage approach to working with people in crisis, ensuring that the person in need receives a complete assessment and a helpful response. The research done by Mishara, Chagnon, Daigle, Balan, Raymond, Marcoux, Bardon, Campbell and Berman (2007) indicates that the demonstration of respect for the client, empathy, and collaborative problem solving are the critical factors for successful crisis intervention in telephone based intervention. Through this process, our crisis volunteers will learn valuable skills in the areas of interpersonal communication during emotionally charged situations that can be applied on our crisis services and in their personal and professional lives.

In 2020, our crisis volunteers gave 23,404 hours in the contact centre.
- 110 new volunteers completed the crisis intervention training online.
- 100% of our volunteers say they use their volunteering skills outside of DC with their family, at school, work and in the community.
- Our crisis line volunteers represent $409,570 in savings in salaries.
- Our highly trained volunteers and staff responded to 65,762 crisis calls, 5,947 chats, 2,024 texts and 388 emails.
- We received the highest number of suicide related contacts ever in 50 years of providing crisis services to the community.
- Suicide was a presenting issue on 17% of 55,158 calls
- We recorded 1050 emergency interventions
- 98% of volunteers who responded to a 2020 survey, identified gaining new skills from volunteer that they were able to use in other areas of their lives become more connected and involved with their community,

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Who Will it Benefit?

The entire community benefits:
- the individuals and families in the community who contact us, as we save lives everyday.
- the volunteers trained to help those in need who give back their time to the community
- the over 127,000 contacts who reach out for help through phone, email, chat, text, and counselling
- the community who benefits from our 24/7 crisis services building a community of self care and a stronger, healthier and resilient community for everyone