About your host, Tim Huff…

BHi-res publicity photoorn and raised in Toronto, Tim has traveled extensively throughout Canada and the United States and into Europe, researching, networking, training and encouraging others around proactive measures and compassionate responses to domestic poverty and homelessness. 

At age 16, Tim learned sign language and accepted a counselor’s position at The Ontario Camp of the Deaf, in northern Ontario. Continuing on through his late teens and well into adulthood (originally through summer high school and college breaks and later via Youth Unlimited summer secondment) Tim served at this unique camp that cares for deaf and multi-handicapped children, fotimmal.JPGr fifteen entire summers – the last ten as its Staff Director. 

At age 19, after a successful year in Sheridan College’s renowned Classic Animation course, Tim was compelled to work in a “hands on” capacity with marginalized and stigmatized people groups, and completed a “Developmental Service Worker” Honours Diploma from Humber College. Upon graduation, Tim went on to provide special services for deaf and multi-handicapped children and adults for a year and half, in educational and residential settings. 

Throughout Tim’s youth, the very unique rock band he performed in (Double Edge) performed in youth detention centers, half-way houses, shelters and for charity events – in an effort to bring messages of hope through contemporary music. It was there that Tim sensed a calling to work with what at the time were called, “troubled” youth. (Tim continues on in music to this day as the lead singer for the band Outrider, performing in a myriad of venues, including prisons and youth centres, and for fund and awareness raising events in support of charitable causes.)

Since 1987 Tim has worked fulltime among high-risk and marginalized young people through the organization Youth Unlimited (Toronto YFC) – the Toronto chapter of an international agency committed to helping young people develop holistically, both personally and spiritually, by providing caring people to whom they can turn.

Tim began his work with street-involved youth under the banner of Youth Unlimited at age 23, when he founded Frontlines Youth Centre in the rugged north-west end of Toronto.

In 1991, Tim hired his own replacement as director of Frontlines, remained as the Centre’s Board Chair, and transitioned to working with “highest-risk” youth in the city’s downtown core.

For ten years (YFC-logo-web1991 to 2001) Tim worked directly on the streets with homeless youth and adults – committed to being present among the “hidden” homeless; primarily youth so “broken” by sexual and physical abuse that they would not leave the street to enter any building or facility for help. His outreach had him in alleyways, under bridges and in “crack-houses” daily, for more than a decade.

During that time, Tim became a prominent public speaker, advocating for the broad necessity of an appropriate social-justice response to domestic poverty and homelessness: prevention, relief, transition, community building and advocacy.

Over that time, through Youth Unlimited, Tim also pioneered Toronto’s “Operation Good Thing” campaign; a Christmas season street-relief program that has drawn thousands of people into participation and sacrificial giving on behalf of the poor. This program, now in its fifteenth year, partners ten inner-city agencies in practically and relationally reaching out to homeless people of all ages.

In 2001, Tim designed a new outreach program for and with Youth Unlimited. “Lilp_colour_web.jpgght Patrol” is Youth Unlimited’s specialized street outreach created with a commitment to caring for the long-term and immediate needs of homeless youth and young adults. Under Tim’s leadership as “Director of Light Patrol and Homelessness Initiatives”, street-workers (staff and volunteers) are trained and sent out in teams to build safe relationships with youth, rebuild trust, and move young people into healthy adulthoods.

Since its inception, under Tim’s leadership the Light Patrol outreach has expanded to include a street arts program, the early development of a medical street outreach, and a uniquely focused outreach to teenagers in the sex trade (prostitution) – called “Safe Light”.

Tim is an active member of the National Roundtable on Poverty and Homelessness, which has included a specific role as chair for national “Street Level” conferences in Ottawa in 2006 and 2009 – and currently as co-Chair for the 2012 “Street Level” conference – drawing together leaders and frontline workers from across Canada for training, equipping, networking and encouragement, and dialoguing with all levels of government regarding domestic poverty. Tim also served for five years on the Board of Directors for The Daily Bread Food Bank, one of Canada’s most acclaimed hunger reduction agencies; processing more than 16 million pounds of food each year, and ashfth-logosisting with the brokering of food donations and distribution to independent food banks across the nation. Tim currently sits on the Board of Directors for Hockey for the Homeless as the Director of Outreach. Hockey for the Homeless is a national charity that integrates the corporate world and the professional hockey world in all six Canadian NHL cities. Tim also chairs YFC’s National Taskforce on Youth Poverty and Homelessness, representing the interests of more than thirty youth-serving chapters across Canada.

Tim is an active public speaker across North America around issues of contemporary social-justice, domestic poverty, hope, dignity and street-culture – speaking in schools (elementary to post-secondary), churches, and in corporate and Government settings, as well as by all formats of media.

In 2007 Tim wrote and illustrated a best-selling children’s book (and teaching guide) regarding homelessness called The Cardboard Shack Beneath the Bridge, that was released in book stores throughout North America in April 2007 – published by Castle Quay Books, with a foreword by the Honourable Hilary M. Weston. This children’s book won the Canadian Word Guild’s 2007 Best New Children’s book award. 

His second book, for adults and teens, called Bent Hope; A Street Journal (also published by Castle Quay Books), was released in 2008 and has also gone on to be a best-seller. It is an expose of more than 20 years of stories from the street and the relevant implications of Christian faith and social justice to them. This book includes a foreword by international multi-best  selling author Mike Frost, and a Benediction by Canadian multi-award winning singer-songwriter Steve Bell. Bent Hope won two Canadian Word Guild first place awards, in the categories of general readership and Christian culture.

Tim is currently working on a follow-up book to Bent Hope, titled Dancing with Dynamite: Celebrating Against the Odds – to be released nationally and internationally in late 2010, once again published by Castle Quay Books.

Tim, married to Diane since 1987, is the father of two children – Sarah Jane (16) and Jake (12).

Host’s Musings