The Community Initiatives Fund has released a list of the groups receiving funding from the summer grant. Of the over 400 grants and $7,665,369 in funds given out to community organizations, those within the city of Yorkton received $70,000 from the grants.
The local groups that benefitted were the Boys and Girls Club, which received $5,000 for 2016 summer programming and $25,000 for annual programs, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Yorkton and Area which received $20,000 for Big Buddy for Me and $5,000 for Free to Be Me, $5,000 to the City of Yorkton for Summer Recreation Programming, $5,000 to the Parkland Early Childhood Intervention Program for their Early Childhood Summer Program, and $5,000 for the Saskatchewan Ability Council’s Positive Transitions Summer Program in Yorkton.
The money distributed by the CIF comes from funds raised through a portion of the net revenues Casino Regina and Casino Moose Jaw. The funding supports a wide range of community programs through the province.
“Generally, annually we award through this program in the range of $6-7 million each year, and that goes to support all kinds of projects to hundreds of groups throughout the province,” says Tracey Mann, Executive Director of the CIF.
The grants support community based organizations through their different programs. Mann says when they look at applications, they want to see that the programming will have benefits for the community.
“We like to see community partnerships, we like to see support from other community organizations. Sometimes that’s volunteers, sometimes that’s in-kind contributions or dollars from other partners as well.”
In Yorkton, the majority of the funding will be going to support kids programming, which Mann says is fairly typical for the CIF grants in general. While the fund is designed to support programming for all ages, they find that well over half of the projects they support goes to children and youth.
“One of the things that we know is that if you support the development of children and youth that has long term benefits. There is a lot that they gain through participating in programs that helps carry them through and helps them become successful in life, school and work.”
One of the reasons for announcing who is being funded is to get the good ideas of Saskatchewan’s community based organizations spread out through the province. The fund supports a wide range of programming, and some of those programs might be applicable to other communities.
“We hope that communities look at the list and the kind of programs we are supporting... They might see something on the list and say ‘we could do something like that in our community.’ They might reach out to these organizations to learn more about the different programs and how they’re running. I think announcing these programs does help inspire other communities.”
Where the dollars go depends on where the applications come from, Mann says, but they have supported a number of different projects in Yorkton and area in the past and hope to do more in the future.
