Please help this young hero have a secure home

Hi my name is Donna Lynn Baskin and I live in Yellowknife Northwest Territories.

In the wee hours of the morning of Aug 7th, I and my neighbors in the Matonabee South apartment building in the city's downtown awakened to fire and police responders in our parking lot dealing with vehicles that had been set on fire.

One of the vehicles was mine and when the police informed me and brought me outside they also told me that the quick response of emergency services was due to the quick thinking of a young lady who lives in the building who heard the sound of the fire before anyone else and acted quickly to call 911.

This heroic young woman is Grace and she is 8 years old. Although the site and sound of the fire terrified her she kept her wits about her and knew exactly what to do. And because of her quick thinking the emergency responders were able to get there before the fire ignited the gas tanks of the vehicles. Without her quick thinking our building most certainly would have been engulfed and people most certainly would have been injured or possibly killed.

This young woman proves that civic duty knows no age boundaries and that being a person of good courage and character is timeless. She is also an excellent reflection of her wonderful mom who is also been a tremendous asset to our neighborhood. Clearly Grace has learned her sense of responsibility and kindness from her mom.

Sadly however after this happened I discovered that Grace and her mom are experiencing extreme food and housing insecurity. At the end of the month she will be leaving our apartment building and her mom showed me the tent that they have scrounged to live in once this apartment is no longer available to them.

It is inconceivable to me that this young mother and eight-year- old girl should be subjected to living in a tent and trying to manage finding sustenance and going to school while at the same time facing the vagaries of a northern fall and winter and nothing more than a flimsy ground tent that will be squatted behind some trees where the rest of society forgets this blot on our collective conscience.

That is why I wanted to start this GoFundMe to help them obtain stable housing and to establish a sense of peacefulness and home for themselves. It is the very least I can do considering that they most certainly are the reason that I did not lose my home the other night and that I do have that sense of security.

The cost of living in our city is outrageous as I have heard it is in many parts of Canada. The people most viciously injured by this economic crisis are those least able to cope with it... Young families locked in low-income situations or hampered by traumatic illness which prevents regular employment.

Those of us who are blessed with some stability and Security in our lives also have a civic obligation in our society to help those who are in a much more compromised and precarious position.

I asked all of you who are willing to please reach out and help with this GoFundMe fundraiser in order to provide a more hopeful outlook in the life of this young hero.