Local Allocations Breakfast

Every year, our club’s Annual Local Allocations Meeting is one of the most meaningful mornings on the Rotary calendar — the morning we get to see exactly where the funds raised through our hard work land in the community. This year did not disappoint.

From 34 applications totalling over $102,000 in requests, the Allocations Committee — chaired for the 16th consecutive year by Anne, and supported by Len Brunen, Duayne Eby, Rod Goetz, Bryan Huck, Patty O’Reilly, and Diana Pepall— carefully distributed a budget of $42,000 across nine nonprofit organizations and 14 schools.

The committee’s guiding mission: direct the majority of charitable donations to projects involving children and youth 18 and under; plant seeds; invest in people; and make a big splash in a smaller pond. This year, the club also applied a new lens — as a newly designated Rotary Peace Builder Club, applicants were asked to describe the peace impact of their funding request. The answers, Anne noted, were excellent and varied: fostering cooperation and empathy, reducing conflict through a well-maintained environment, conflict recovery and healing, and cultivating future peace builders.

Twenty-three organizations and schools were represented in the room to receive their grants and share how the funds will be used. Here’s a summary of everyone recognized this year.

 

Forest Hill is launching an inter-school soccer tournament for students from lower-income schools — a program designed to give kids who can’t afford organized sports a chance to play. The structure deliberately builds leadership across grades, with older students mentoring younger ones as the program grows year over year.

 

The Fast Forward program at GRCI serves grade 9–12 students who are three to five years behind academically and often come from difficult backgrounds. The grant supports monthly inter-school sports events with five partner schools, a grade 9/10 retreat at Camp Kiwi with mental health and team-building programming including therapy dogs, and the annual GRCI Alive Breakfast — a year-end recognition assembly where every student receives a certificate based on teacher recommendation.

 

What began as a lunchtime support space specifically for grade 9 students navigating the transition to high school has grown into something much larger — a welcoming drop-in space open to all grades. Funded supplies include snacks, journals, mindfulness materials, wellness kits, fidget toys, games, and peer tutoring resources. Next year’s funding will expand wellness and equity initiatives throughout the school.

 

The grant supports the purchase of new sheet music for Margaret Avenue’s concert band program — specifically music by Canadian, Indigenous, Black, Metis, and other underrepresented composers. The library includes pieces touching on grief, joy, and mental health. The program serves in-class grade 7/8 bands and a community band open to parents and alumni.

 

Celebrating its 25th year on ice, Panther Hockey has put nearly 8,000 kids through its program. The club supplies all equipment from head to toe, maintains a large hockey equipment room, and has developed over 400 junior coaches. The program specifically targets kids not involved in organized minor sports — at the Skate 48 event last year, only three of their 200 participants played minor sports. Rotary has been a partner for almost the entire history of the program.

 

Resurrection’s large arts program — which includes concert bands, guitar clubs, vocal groups, and full musicals — used the grant to refresh aging guitars and purchase a new bass guitar, an instrument that students are particularly excited about.

 

Rosemount supports four classrooms of students aged 15 to 21, primarily diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and other complex needs. The grant funded the purchase of a specialized sensory swing and a weight-appropriate base — equipment that is extremely difficult to source for students who may weigh up to 300 pounds. To their students, the presenter noted through tears, it is not just a swing: it is a safe place to calm the nervous system, regulate anxiety, strengthen core muscles, and experience genuine fun.

 

St. Clement’s is creating classroom-based wellness bins and comfort stations to keep students in their learning environment rather than stepping out when emotions run high. Community partners will be brought in to teach practical regulation skills. The goal: reduce stigma around mental health by normalizing access to tools right in the classroom.

 

Shepherd has a large outdoor space but lacked a dedicated, enclosed area for kindergarten students — particularly important as the number of students with special needs, including those who are runners, continues to grow. The grant is funding a climbing structure, an accessible sandbox, and a mud kitchen within a new fenced kindergarten play area visible from Weber Street.

 

The following schools also received grants through their respective school board foundations:

Laurentian Public School: Community experience programming

The Ripple Effect: conflict resolution workshop delivered across public schools

St. Agnes Catholic School: Gaga ball pits

St. Timothy School: Sensory equipment

Trillium Public School: Peace and learning garden

Since 2020, the Lids on Kids program has been visiting schools across Waterloo Region to teach children how the brain works, how injuries happen, how to properly fit a helmet, and how to be a good friend to someone living with a brain injury. Fitting instructions are now available in 10 languages. To date, the program has distributed over 6,400 helmets and educated more than 13,000 children in 530+ classrooms. This year alone, Rotary’s support made possible the distribution of over 1,200 helmets.

 

For 52 years, Pride Stables in Deer Ridge has provided therapeutic horseback riding for individuals with disabilities. The movement of a horse mimics the human gait, providing passive massage, core strengthening, balance development, and socialization through interaction with volunteers and the horses themselves. Their herd of 23 horses — including the irrepressible pony Danny, who is nearly 30 and thoroughly in love with a full-size horse named Clover — stays with Pride Stables for the rest of their natural lives. Riders range from young children to women in their 80s recovering from strokes.

 

Operating since 1993 and running a car seat program since 2003, the CNDC partners with over 40 agencies and organizations in the region to identify families in need of a safe infant car seat. Last year, 159 car seats were provided. Many recipients are newcomers to Canada with limited English — each car seat comes with a hands-on safety demonstration. Rotary has been a funding partner for many years.

 

A new recipient this year, Destiny Athletics Canada is a nonprofit filling the funding gap for underfunded athletes pursuing national, international, or Olympic-level competition. In three years the organization has supported 14 athletes across six sports. One example: Emily, a weightlifter and powerlifter who is also a working mother, competing at international level including in Australia.

 

For over 30 years, Send Them Off Smiling has been packing individualized back-to-school backpacks for children from JK through grade 8 in low-income families. Each backpack — packed for a specific child, with their preferences and sizing in mind — contains pants, a top, underwear, socks, a long-sleeve shirt, and a pair of shoes. Last year, 876 bags were packed, at a cost of $150–$175 each. Whole families are packed together. Rotary members have helped with packing in previous years. The organization has recently moved to a new location on Lawrence Street.

 

Grassroots Response provides housing and wraparound support for Ukrainian newcomers in Waterloo Region, currently operating eight houses supporting over 80 people. They also partner with Women’s Crisis Services, Compass Refugee Centre, and Reception House to extend support to a broader group of newcomers and refugees. The Rotary grant funds a Ukrainian-themed summer camp open to children as young as four — welcoming both Ukrainian newcomers and low-income families from the broader community, with teenagers age 14+ invited to participate as volunteer junior counsellors rather than paying campers.

 

Starting about five years ago with an initial target of 25 classrooms, Waterloo Region Suicide Prevention’s school presentation program became mandatory in the Waterloo Region District School Board in its very first year — delivering 121 presentations. Today the program delivers 200 class-by-class presentations annually to grade 7 students, equipping them with resilience tools, emotional literacy resources (including a “feelings wheel” that goes well beyond “sad” and “mad”), and crisis resource cards small enough to tuck behind a phone case. The program’s core focus: teaching young people how to support a friend who is struggling.

 

Track 3 serves approximately 80 children per year with physical or cognitive disabilities, giving them the experience of downhill skiing with all equipment provided. Their motto: safety, fun, learning — in that order. The Rotary grant funds the replacement of old, cumbersome seatbelt-style harnesses with new zip-on harnesses featuring a back handle and tether attachment, custom-logoed with the Track 3 branding.

 

Unable to attend due to their own celebration, Food for Kids was recognized in absentia. The organization delivers healthy food packages to children living in food-insecure homes on weekends and during school breaks. They currently serve 1,400 children in 129 elementary schools across the region.