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Club President Loida Lumanlan with Courtney Lee This week we were pleased to hear from Courtney Lee from Sport Central. She told us that Sport Central is an organization that supplies children’s sports equipment of all kinds to families in need in Northern Alberta, from Red Deer north to the border. Their mission is to empower kids (to be able to take part in sports) one piece of sports equipment at a time. They supply this equipment free of charge. They accept donations of gently used sports equipment then repair, refurbish and redistribute it to kids aged 4 to 17 in families facing financial hardship. If the equipment can not be restored adequately, they recycle it. They do not accept clothing. She said they carry equipment for twenty different sports including Baseball, Basketball, Bicycles, Cross country skiing, Figure Skating, Football, Kids Golf, Ice Hockey, Ringette, Snowboarding, Soccer, Tennis, Volleyball and more. They have a well signed location at 11847 Wayne Gretzky Drive where they accept donations, repair, refurbish, fit and distribute equipment. They sharpen all skates before distribution. They try to outfit a child within five days of the request for equipment. They have three other locations in Edmonton where they store and distribute equipment from and in addition they have forty-nine donation locations around the Edmonton area. Courtney said that they work in conjunction with seventy six different social services in the Edmonton area such as Kids Sport, Catholic Social Services, the Newcomers Center and many more. They deliver pallets of equipment all over Northern Alberta including to schools in Northern Alberta who are in need of equipment for their children. They also work with the roughly one hundred RCMP detachments in Northern Alberta so supply deflated balls and a pump which the officers can carry in their vehicles so that they can play ball with the local children as an outreach activity. She said that they outfitted thirteen thousand children in the last year. They repaired just under twenty-three hundred pieces of equipment and just over twenty-seven hundred bicycles. Demand for their services is increasing each year and they anticipate it will reach twenty five thousand within the next few years. Courtney said that they would like to be able to amalgamate their four repair, storage and distribution locations all under one roof. Courtney said that they currently have eleven paid staff and about ninety active volunteers. They are always in need of volunteers to clean, repair and refurbish equipment. They also accept monetary donations which they use to purchase new equipment such as helmets or bicycle bells for sanitary or safety reasons. She also said they receive some funding from the Alberta government ‘Every Kid Can Play’ program. We can help by donating equipment, donating funding or volunteer time. More information is available on their website at www.sportcentral.org |
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