Vale Canada recently made a donation of 250, 000 dollars to the Community Wellness and Public Safety Advisory Committee.

The funding will be used to set up a second Shelter-In-Place Program, or SHIPP, to provide a more pandemic-friendly space to vulnerable and homeless residents in the community while reducing density at facilities like the Thompson Homeless Shelter.

The new SHIPP campus will be located at the Polaris 5 building on Princeton Drive, where the Thompson Sobering Centre will be.

The city says the new shelter space is a quick way to use the Polaris building in a meaningful way as the committee works towards a more complete sobering centre.

The first campus was launched in April 2020 at the local YWCA, which housed 25 of Thompson’s most at-risk houseless residents to protect vulnerable people and help control the spread of COVID-19 among those living outdoors.