Volunteer of the Year Barred from Carnegie Center

Ada D. returned to Carnegie Community Center last Wednesday after being barred from this City of Vancouver building for two weeks at the beginning of April.

Ada, a middle-aged woman with long brown hair originally from Newfoundland, was barred when another kitchen volunteer, Dominick, alleged that he had seen her take some sugar home.

Last year Ada got the Carnegie Volunteer of the Year award. Translation: she had put in hundreds of hours of labor in the Carnegie kitchen for 80 cents an hour in food vouchers.  Her reign as Carnegie Volunteer of the Year ended last week when the 2008 Volunteer of the Year was chosen during Volunteer Recognition Week.  Ada, having served her sentence, returned in time to participate in some of the celebrations at week's end. 

For years, Carnegie Security staff have faced criticism for barring members from the building, at times without adequate evidence or due process.  Skip, Head of Security at Carnegie, supervised the barring of William "Bill" Simpson from the Learning Center for allegedly blogging about issues such as staff locking doors to services funded for the poor.  Simpson was not a blogger. 

Full story and photo at Downtown Eastside Enquirer