OUR TEAM
As the great Gabor Maté explained: "Any healing work we do is an extension of healing our own wounds - 'The Wounded Healer' ". This project initially felt like a curiosity to understand the lives of the street community and turned into a personal journey to look at and transform the shame and isolation that I held my story with. For the past 4 years I've learned that the deeper we go into our own experience the more we learn about the collective experience, our common humanity.
I have a Masters in Strategic Leadership, I've worked in the non-profit industry for over 10 years and I am continuously on a journey of learning and healing. If you feel drawn to take part in this project or have any other ways you think we could work to make the world a better place, I want to hear from you. With love!
Contact: marko@theexistenceproject.ca
Armed with a degree in sociology and media, and a lifelong love of storytelling, I’m grateful for the opportunity to coordinate initiatives and connect communities through The Existence Project. I believe in the power of empathy to build a better world, and am excited by the potential for creative online media to tell the stories that need to be told. Since starting out with the organization, I’ve been constantly amazed at the new directions this work takes us and I look forward to continuing to grow alongside the Project.
Contact: meera@theexistenceproject.ca
Parker is a community organizer, facilitator, and youth mentor. He holds a degree in Psychology with a minor in Education. The bulk of his experience comes from 7 years of support work, community outreach and inclusion, primarily with at-risk inner-city youth as well as adult populations.
Contact: kendra@theexistenceproject.ca
Born and raised in Victoria, Adam has always been fascinated with technology. Comfortable with computers from an early age, he recently decided to explore his passion and began making websites in 2018. He is excited to be working on the Existence project and glad for the opportunity give back to his community. He looks forward to helping non-profits spread their message to the world as well as other businesses and individuals grow through the power of the web.
Contact: adam@theexistenceproject.ca
Sinan Demirel is a sociologist with over three decades of experience in addressing homelessness in a variety of capacities: as a volunteer, advocate, researcher, direct service provider, nonprofit executive, consultant, author and public speaker.
He has directed government-funded research studies and taught university courses on the sociology of homelessness. He began volunteering in soup kitchens and food banks in the late ‘80s and in the ‘90s undertook a participant-observation study, culminating in his Ph.D. dissertation on the topic of organizations that engage with Seattle’s homeless community.
During that time, he founded the Friday Feast meal program, which Seattle’s street newspaper Real Change has called “the best of all soup kitchens” and from there went on to direct organizations that provided shelter and transitional housing. Sinan moved to Victoria in 2018, first working as a Senior Research Coordinator at the Community Social Planning Council before coming to the Existence Project.
Contact: sinan@theexistenceproject.ca