CYC will soon offer a drop-in gym class for youth                                           250News photo

Prince George, BC – The Connaught Youth Centre hopes to begin filling a gap in child, youth, and family programming for residents living in the Ron Brent and VLA neighbourhoods.

CYC Executive Director, Catharine Kendall, says the centre will launch its first youth drop-in class next month, in a bid to start offering up low-cost or no-cost activities to an area of the city that is poorly served.

Kendall says the offering will be the first of many to come, as the Connaught Youth Centre Society moves through a two-year transition to becoming the Boys & Girls Club of Prince George.

The CYC Society was created in 2010 and Kendall says the past five years have just been about managing the facility and keeping it open for the various user groups – from the Prince George Army Cadets to the Shaolin Boxing Club.  Last spring, the society received some funding and hired Kendall to be its Executive Director.  She spent the summer researching various models for the facility and felt the Boys & Girls Club would be a good fit.  This past fall, the society’s board agreed.

“The Boys & Girls Club offers up a national model that has 100 years of experience and success behind it – it allows us to tap into a whole host of resources behind the scenes,” says Kendall.  “You know, drop-in policies that we can copy and paste – those kinds of things that help a society run with things faster than if we were doing it on our own.”

Next month’s drop-in class is aimed at youth, from 3:30pm to 5:30pm on Fridays.  The CYC is looking for two youth volunteers to help lead the activities that could range from tumbling and gymnastics to dodgeball, depending on what interests the kids.  And Kendall says that’s just the beginning, “We’d certainly like to transition over time to offering parenting programs at the same time in one of the classrooms – those kinds of things to make it very child, youth, and family friendly.”

She stresses that nothing will change for the Centre’s current user groups.  The new programming filling up the ‘blank spaces’ in the facility’s calendar.  And, Kendall says, it’s going to be a community process.

“For instance, Big Brother/Big Sisters called to thank us for running with (the drop-in) because it’s something they’d want to do, but aren’t structured for, so they want to be able to partner with us to make sure what we do is successful.”

The CYC Executive Director says, “Just having community groups like that reach out to us and let us know we’re on the right track is really exciting.”

A delegation from the soon-to-be Boys & Girls Club of Prince George plans to appear before City Council at its March 7th meeting.  That’s the night council will give final reading to a rezoning application to allow a new seniors complex in a portion of Ron Brent Park.  Kendall spoke out against the use of parkland for the development at a public hearing in council chambers on February 1st.  The rezoning application was approved unanimously. (click here, for previous story)

Kendall hopes to use the time before council to talk about the need to maintain park space around the Youth Centre and also to discuss the need for a long-term lease for the building to ensure success for the Boys & Girls Club.