December 2021💚
To the kind friends and gracious supporters of the kids of the Ogden youth centre and the communities of Pineridge, Bowness, Shaganappi/Spruce Cliff, Radisson, Penbrooke, Dover, Forest Lawn, Applewood, Abbeydale and Rosscarrock, all communities that YCC – Youth Centres of Calgary has served during this incredible year.
This is our story of 2021.
I’ve always known that the work we do, giving food, safety, academic support, athletic opportunities, and friendship is important work to kids living in lower income communities. This has been a particularly tough year for many and has reinforced my belief in the importance of helping on the front lines.
A recent series of New York Times articles “A Way to Break the Cycle of Poverty” (David L. Kirp) validates YCC’s work with data. The NYTimes reports on the value of investing in social supports for children and their parents. Simple gestures, like free lunch, and funded programs for kids and families are what people living in systemic poverty need to meet their physical and emotional needs. Meeting those needs allows them to function better. When kids and families function better, they build hope, work harder and are more likely to succeed in the world. Our work is simple and yet it’s an important part of getting kids and their families out of poverty right now. I’ve been doing this work for 10 years and we are now seeing the studies to prove the importance of our presence and programs. We see the impact every day. This is great news.
For the 22 months after we first closed our Ogden house doors to indoor activity, the same day that the schools closed, YCC has successfully managed to execute its mandate: to meet the basic needs of the kids that it serves every day, AKA, to help alleviate the impact of cyclical poverty. Although we closed in 2020 to gatherings of kids in the house,
there wasn’t even one day of “real” closure. The schools and social workers were asking us “Who is going to feed the kids?” Perfectly situated to step in, we embarked on a different way of meeting a more expansive and growing need for food, community, sports, literacy and friendship, a tending to the physical and emotional needs of kids who, through no fault of their own, live in families who struggle. This we did by creating a large network of people running 18 pop-up food sites in 11 communities, 7 of which were serving 5-7 days a week for the entire duration of the lock-down. Every day, a team of enthusiastic and hardworking volunteers showed up to their satellite pop-up sites and distributed thousands of commercial kitchen-made bag lunches, grocery items, frozen meals, and hundreds of books and sports gear to the families. The Ogden youth centre became the warehouse and a distribution centre. We estimate the final provision exceeded 150,000 servings, always with a “thank you for coming” and a “come back tomorrow”.
September presented
an opportunity to reopen to youth as a youth centre, our expertise and our first love. With schools in and agencies serving food again, we began registering new kids (ages 10-15) for daily afterschool activity. One of our kids waited patiently to reach the minimum age to attend and has become one of our most enthusiastic attendees. We began again to give a new group of kids what they needed, healthy food, music, sports, safety, art, access to technology, and very very cool people. As the neuroscientists say – we give their young “brains a break” from what they experience every day. This is important work.
I had an impromptu meeting this weekend with the daughter of a residential school survivor, a child of group homes. An Ogden resident, she appeared on our doorstep, looking for a little bit of “this and that”, jackets and some food, for her 5 young grandchildren. She is the maven in her family. She generously told me her story and left with an armload. YCC has swiftly become an adaptable hub, a physical space where kids and their families can bravely reach out for help with all kinds of things and acquire a sense of belonging. We are part of the fabric of Ogden now. We are not the entire solution to poverty, but we are giving all that we can to people who need help right now.
Just as we were settling into a new routine, with 20 to 30 kids a day, we saw the uncertainty around the Omicron variant and decided that closing the centre for the month of December was the safest thing to do. With a relatively high degree of vaccine hesitancy and uncertainty around the variant, we felt that closing to indoor activities was best. We know now that reopening as soon as possible will add calm and order to the many kids that we now serve.
Meanwhile,
kids can still come every day after school for healthy snacks, gently used clothes, free books, and smiles from the doorstep. In lieu of a holiday party, we are giving out gift cards and treat bags to 85 kids and are giving holiday meal ingredient boxes to 80 families. We’ll open the heated sports shack to lend skates and supply hot chocolate. Even though we can’t give them what we normally would over the holidays, we are trying to make sure that no kid in our line of sight will go without food or a gift over the holidays.
Every day, I think about you, the people who inspire us to touch on an issue that is deserving of so much attention, the kids. Thanks to you, we are able to give them what they need and deserve and otherwise do not have – a consistent, safe and welcoming home-away-from-home, where they can just “be a kid”. You are helping improve the everyday lives and the futures of kids who run into the centre and light up when they see the volunteers who are there to help.
That is your gift. You are always present in their lives, and I am personally grateful to you.
With gratitude, love and admiration,
❤️ Jane
YCC – Youth Centres of Calgary 7400 23 Street SE, Calgary T2C0X9 - 403-850-7884
https://youthcentresofcalgary.com/donate-funds-to-yccCharitable Registration #: 706183118 RR0001
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