Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (May 18/98) - As one of the organizers of Kamatsiaqtut, the Baffin Crisis Line, Sheila Levy hopes to help people in her region help themselves before suicide becomes their only option.

"I hope people call before suicide is seen as something that's desirable or as the only way out," says Levy, who has been involved with the project since its inception more than eight years ago.

And although she says she doesn't see herself or her team of about 40 volunteers as saviors, she says they do offer healthy alternatives to callers and their problems. "We help them develop the resources in their own life and carry on and know there are support systems for them. We don't see ourselves as the answer, just as a community group that helps, part of the whole.

"It takes a whole community to help someone in need. We help people help themselves. That's my belief, my philosophy," says Levy.

While suicide calls are common, she says that Baffin residents call in for help with a wide range of issues.

"We've had everything from nail-biting on," says Levy.

"We get relationship abuse, people who for the very first time talk about things in the past and are secure enough to do that, drug and alcohol abuse, a lot of grieving, a lot of people who are dealing with a lot. Financial, overcrowding, depression -- when we pick up the phone, we don't know who we're dealing with."

Levy says she is able to better meet the needs of caller by using volunteers from all walks of life, giving people more of a choice when they call in for counselling.

Callers are often given their choice of a male or female listener, language and even the listener's age.

"We're just starting to take students. We've had university students before ... we're taking students in Grade 11 and 12, but we don't put them on by themselves and we're very careful with them."

Between the group of current volunteers who are moving on and the influx of new crisis-line workers, clients will have even more choice.

"We're about one- third Inuit but a lot of people we're losing are non-native and are replaced with Inuit so it should be about half and half," says Levy, who is quick to add that all of the volunteers are crucial to Kamatsiaqtut.

"I don't want anyone to feel like they're not a valuable volunteer because of ethnicity," says Levy, a Northerner since 1978.

Protecting her volunteers is a top priority for Levy and she is adamant about not giving out their names or the location of the Baffin Crisis Line.

"We are not letting where we are (to be) known for many reasons. For example, a woman is being abused by her partner and number 1, if he knew she was talking to someone on the crisis line, and number 2, if he knew where the location was, he might wait afterwards."

The reverse situation can also happen.

"Someone might be so enamoured of a volunteer that they might want to have a relationship. Some volunteers have received proposals of marriage," says Levy, who encourages her workers to be keep the fact that they are crisis-line workers secret. She feels that clients may be uncomfortable using the service if they know who they are calling.

While Kamatsiaqtut and organizations like it receive a great deal of their funding through donations in the North, their southern counterparts are poorly funded, a problem Levy hopes to rectify in her new position of president of the Canadian Association of Suicide Prevention.

"Groups and funding organizations have trouble attaching their names to suicide. I hope to change that, it's one of my goals," says Levy.

She feels pleased to have been elected to represent the association.

"They've recognized that it's important to have a president where suicide is the most prevalent in Canada and mostly the world."

The Baffin Crisis Line is open seven nights a week from 9 p.m. to midnight and offers counselling in Inuktitut and English.