BONNYVILLE – The Bonnyville Youth Club may no longer be named the Bonnyville Boys and Girls Club, but that’s the only change the facility has seen.
“It’s important that parents know that just because we changed our name doesn’t mean we’ve changed our club,” emphasized Sasha Johnston, executive director of the Bonnyville Youth Club. “Our organization is everything that they still know what it’s been in the past. We just have a different name. We’re still offering the same programs and we’re still here to help and invite children to play.”
According to Johnston, the local youth club is continuing to use a number of policies from the Boys and Girls Club of Canada and still touch base with the organization.
When asked why the decision was made to change their name, Johnston stated it was an issue with what they could and couldn’t provide.
“The reason we’re not part of their umbrella organization anymore is we’re a really small club. A lot of their clubs offer daycare and everything else. It was tough for us to meet all the requirements and data processing that they needed. It was tough because we were so small,” she added.
Although COVID-19 has made offering its services difficult, the Bonnyville Youth Club is still running their after-school program and made some adjustments to follow provincial protocols.
“We do homework help and we used to run our Kids in the Kitchen program, which is a bit harder now because we have to prepare all of the food for everyone. But we’re still working on showing the kids healthy snack choices that way,” explained Johnston, adding they also have arts and crafts and indoor and outdoor sports, when the weather permits.
“We celebrate everyone’s birthday at the end of the month, so everyone gets a cake and a nice treat instead of just food and vegetables. They all really enjoy that.”
The pandemic has put a limit on the number of children they can accept into their after-school program, a number they’re quickly approaching.
“We’ve had so many new memberships over the last couple of months that we’re just about at our capacity, so that’s challenging because if we get to that point, I’m not sure what we will do,” Johnston said.
No matter what the future holds, Johnston stated the Bonnyville Youth Club is dedicated to staying open and offering their services for an affordable price.
“Our membership costs $200 a year for families, whereas after-school programs that are run through the school, we’re subsidized so parents can get it subsidized but a lot of families can’t afford the $300 a month that (schools charge).”
The Bonnyville Youth Club may hold summer camps this year, but Johnston stressed that will depend on the provincial protocols in place.
“We haven’t specified or made any significant decisions on them. We’re working on setting up a meeting with our board and programmer to decide how we want those programs to look and how we can make them work if restrictions stay the same. We have to be mindful of cohorts and that sort of thing.”
