We have three smaller shelters around us. Atikokan is two hours away, and Marathon and Greenstone are three hours away. We have three smaller shelters, and we have transportation policies and protocols for how women in outlying areas can access the shelter in Thunder Bay and vice versa.
I'll give you my shelter breakdown. Demographically, for this shelter, we have seen a huge increase in newcomer and immigrant women. I would say we've moved from 5% to 20% or maybe 25% over the last two years. I believe that that will increase.
That presents us with lots of opportunities to change. For instance, there's the language barrier and the question of what app we are using when we are accessing services and all of those things.
I would say that 40% of women are indigenous and often from this community or those surrounding communities. I would say that the rest are Caucasian.
One of the things that we have is that Sioux Lookout and Red Lake—very north from here—have a transportation policy as well. How do we get women out of the far north into our shelters? From there, if women aren't staying in Sioux Lookout, we have another policy of moving women to locations where they might be better served.
That is the demographic.
We have my sister shelter here, Beendigen. They are almost 100% indigenous and serve almost 100% indigenous women. Most of those women would be from Thunder Bay and surrounding areas.