Saskatoon runaway program may run out of money

An effort to reach out to repeat runaways on the streets of Saskatoon is seeing success, but the organization behind it says its days may be numbered.

I've been doing this for 25 years and it still bothers me.- Don Meikle,Egadzexecutive director

Project Runaway is led byEgadz, a non-profit organization with a high degree of street credibility.Egadzhas been able to gather repeat runaways for regular roundtable meetings to try to understand their needs.

"It's heartbreaking the stories they are telling. We've had kids telling their story and actually writing their story and I've been doing this for 25 years and it still bothers me," said Egadzexecutive director DonMeikle.

"You know, they feel like they haven't been listened to, a lot of anger and bitterness on the kid's' part."

In an interview with CBC Radio'sSaskatoon Morning,Meiklesaid the pilot project was born out of frustration from Saskatoon police, who investigated 2,800 missing persons cases last year. That's more than double the number from a decade ago.

• Saskatoon police focusing on families to prevent runaways, crime

• Repeated missing persons like 'constantly hitting the reset button'

The problem led to a series of meetings betweenMeikleand former Saskatoon police chiefCliveWeighill. Meikle encouraged Weighill to look to kids for the answer as to how to keep missing persons cases down.

Money running out

The program has also been able to equip repeat runaways with donated cellphones so that if they go missing, officials and loved ones are still able to reach them to make sure they are safe.

ButMeiklewarnedEgadzcan only keep this up until next month, and then he doesn't know how the project will be funded.

From Meikle's perspective, if governments and other organizations do not step up, it will tell him a lot about how little they care about runaways.

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