Following a week of celebrations for Canadian youth, Airdrie youth groups look at how they’re supporting the young members of its communities.
The Airdrie Youth Volunteer Corps (YVC) always has a lot of events going on and the celebration of youth is spilling over to the entire month of May, according to Susan Baycroft, YVC Airdrie’s director of program administration.
Youth spent time at the Airdrie Care Community, helping the food bank, and cleaning up highway ditches during Youth Week.
“This year it was a week of giving the youth an opportunity to really contribute and be part of the community,” Baycroft said. “We're really looking forward later this month to have a big party for the kids.”
The focus of this year’s youth week was on two large projects, including FREE-Cycle Powered and the community garden.
FREE-Cycle Powered is completely run by youth volunteers with funding secured to provide brand new bicycles, on loan, to any youth in the community who could benefit from having the transportation ability of a bicycle.
“Whether it's for leisure or to get to a part time job or for friends or whatever it is,” Baycroft said.
They hope to have the program running by June 1.
YVC partnered with the Airdrie Agricultural Society for the community garden, which they’ve done for several seasons. Their big planting day is coming up on May 11, where they will also be raising money by selling rain barrels.
Several other initiatives this year, like adding solar power and some other STEM related projects will help the community garden grow. All the proceeds from the garden go to the Airdrie Food Bank.
Feedback from the kids has shown Baycroft how YVC gives them a place where they can give back and also a place where they feel safe, welcome, and comfortable.
“Not all youth are part of every sports team or doing all of the other extracurriculars, but they know they want to be doing something, and volunteering or acts of service is such a beautiful way for them to feel that connection to their peers and to their community,” Baycroft said.
YVC currently has almost 200 young people on its roster with 50 participating at any given time, she added. YVC is open to everybody from ages 11 to 18.
Airdrie Boys and Girls Club
Canada’s National Youth Week officially ended on May 7 with a lot of events held over the past weekend in Airdrie. Airdrie’s Boys and Girls Club (BGC) welcomed youth to their PJ party and video game palooza on May 3.
“It was a total smash hit,” said Sammy Morros, manager of the BCG youth programs and services. “I think we capped out at around 30 kids, which was really exciting and a lot bigger than last year.”
Morros said they were excited about the few new faces in the crowd.
“When talking about teenagers and young people, relationship building is really important,” Morros said. “So hopefully they got a chance to connect with the staff and find out what this is like and get comfortable in the space.”
The BGC wanted to create a free event for youth, where they could get together for some clean fun. Youth participated in Virtual Reality (VR), they also had access to the computer lab, and they played a movie.
“We have such a young population and so many amazing young people in the community,” Morros said. “The thing that we hear a lot from parents and from youth is that they just want a place to go to have fun.”
Most of the programming at the BGC has a social emotional focus, as well as building life skills, but the youth week event focused more on providing a place for youth to get together.
The BGC currently has over 800 members and Morros said they see about 65 young people come through their doors on an average school day, whether it be for their after school programming or just to drop by.
Head to volunteerairdrie.ca/yvc for more information on YVC or head to bgcairdrie.com for more information on BGC.
