Rotary Club Helping Youth!
Wow, here is a donation of $33,500, presented by Rotarian Joel Park to Cool Aid Society (Helen Ficocelli; Exec Director) for completion of South side facility and recognition of the support from Doug Nilsson from Nilsson Construction Ltd.
Great work Rotarians! Newspaper story from the DHT:
A recent donation from the Grande Prairie Rotary Club will help the local Cool Aid Society complete its south-side location, which is the newest building for the organization.
“To finish the building what we needed is parking for parents to come in. To justify it in my mind for the kids is that they will now have a basketball court and a chalkboard for street chalk,” said Helen Ficocelli, executive director.
The society recently accepted a cheque for $33,500 to help with the project and Nilsson Construction Ltd. has stepped up to help with the building.
The Cool Aid Society is an after-school program that offers children aged six through 12 a safe place to hang out and make new friends. The programming relies heavily on contributions from the community, which allows them to keep things free.
“The fact that we’re free of charge really helps families. There are families in this community who have a lot and then there are others who are really struggling,” Ficocelli said.
“There’s a nice mix of children between the haves and the have-nots. There’s a nice mix of cultures, some that require supports and some not, and it creates supports within themselves.”
Organizations often seek out the Rotary Club to fund projects and as Joel Park, outgoing member of the board of directors points out, the group does what it can to support the requests.
The money for this particular donation came from recent casino efforts by Rotarians.
“The key is to raise funds and distribute it to various organizations around the community and Cool Aid Society is obviously a very important one in this particular community,” he said.
“We look at every situation independently and do approve funding for some projects and don’t approve funding for others and that’s simply because, unfortunately, the dollars aren’t endless and we have to make choices.”
Work on the parking lot is scheduled to begin soon and will likely take a few weeks, but Ficocelli said that the construction won’t affect the summer programming at the building, located along Prairie Road near the Dave Barr Arena.
“We’re going to make sure it doesn’t. We have a second entrance and a huge park in the back and there’s an area that won’t be touched by the parking lots,” she said.
“If it wasn’t for donations like this, we couldn’t run the program we do. Funds like this go towards the infrastructure so that we don’t have to take it out of programming money.”