People Choose Their Personal Goals

Winner 2003

Hello my name is Tania Mash-Gagnon. I just wanted to take this opportunity to share with everyone this wonderful story of how the dreams of people we support can come true.

I’ll give you a brief history to understand how the outcome of "people choosing their personal goals" became a reality. I first started working with Mervin Rajala as one of his casual support staff in the fall of 1996. My shifts were sporadic and at different times of the day, so it took a while to get to know him. We would go for walks, browse in shopping centres, stroll through the parks and sometimes we would watch movies together. It wasn’t long before you could key into the underlying comments you would often hear him say, such as "I want children." Anyone who knows Merv would know that he loves to talk about all the people and family from his past. He would constantly be showing pictures of people from his past to share his memories with you. In amongst the conversations, Merv would always express how much he would love to have children. The more I got to know Merv the more I realized how important the idea of having his own children was to him. He would see kids in the park and smile or laugh and say, "that’s my son, I want a son." Staff would share their personal photos of their children and Merv would cherish these. We’d be sitting on the couch and Merv would say, "I want to get married and have children."

There would be times that I would comment to him about how many kids he would like to have; he would say two, a boy and a girl.

It saddened me when I would hear him speak about his unrealized dreams. I never thought in a million years that this dream would happen for him. Merv had some money in trust, and I asked my co-worker Larry Sochackey what he thought about approaching Merv’s cousin Ken to utilize the money for Merv to sponsor a foster child. That way Merv could send money to the child for food, medicine, education or whatever was needed, and in exchange Merv could have a photo of his child to show everyone and create new memories, and most importantly to realize his dream. Larry asked Ken about our idea, and Ken started to research different agencies. In August 2003 Ken had arranged all the details and Merv was assigned a foster child.

Merv carries around his picture with pride as any new parent would. Merv’s success shows us that dreams can happen to anyone as long as supports are in place to do so. Just keeping striving to achieve them!!

Larry Sochackey and Tania Mash-Gagnon
The Advocate for Community Living