Real voices. Real journeys.

“I didn’t know how to cook anything when I got here. Like, nothing. Now I make bannock better than my kookum and she’d probably be mad if she heard me say that.”

Marcus came to New Steps at 17 after bouncing between three group homes in two years. He’d been in care since he was nine. The first few weeks were rough — he didn’t trust anyone, didn’t want to follow the routine, and kept testing the boundaries to see if staff would give up on him like everyone else had. They didn’t. It took about two months before he stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop. The turning point was small — one of the staff asked if he wanted to help prep dinner, and he said yeah, mostly out of boredom. That turned into cooking every Wednesday. Then it turned into him actually enjoying it. He got his Food Handler’s Certificate through the program and picked up part-time work at a restaurant on Portage. He’s still figuring a lot out. Some weeks are better than others. But he’s got his own suite now, he’s paying his phone bill, and he’s talking about going back to school for his GED.

“Back home the church was everything — Sunday service, community dinners, the whole thing. I was scared I’d lose that when I moved to the city. But they helped me find a church here and I go most Sundays.”

Tyler came to Winnipeg from a Northern community at 16. He’d never lived in a city before. Everything was louder, faster, and lonelier than he expected. He missed his community, his cousins, the lake. The first month he barely talked to anyone. What helped was that the staff didn’t push. They asked what mattered to him back home, and he talked about church — how it was the centre of everything in his community, how his whole family went every Sunday, how the community dinners after service were the best part of his week. The team connected him with a church in the North End, and he started going. It gave him something familiar in a city that felt completely foreign. He’s still in Phase 1, still adjusting. He joined the boxing program and that’s helped with the stress. He calls his mom every few days. He’s not sure what comes next, but he says he feels less lost than he did six months ago.

“I didn’t even know about my heritage until I was 15. My foster family never told me. The cultural programming here — that’s where I started learning who I actually am.”

Noah grew up in non-Indigenous foster care and didn’t learn about his Indigenous heritage until a caseworker mentioned it when he was 15. By then he’d been in care for a decade and had no connection to his community, his culture, or his family history. When he came to New Steps at 17, the cultural programming wasn’t something he was interested in at first — it felt like it was for other people, people who’d grown up knowing who they were. But he kept showing up. He learned to bead. He sat in on drumming circles. An Elder told him stories and he realized that history was his history. He says the identity piece has been bigger than the housing, bigger than the job skills, bigger than any of it. He’s now in Phase 2, working at a hardware store, and getting into cultural activities on weekends. He laughs when he says that last part, but you can tell he means it.