Thanks to a Charity for Youth and Children Initiatives Grant from Canada Post Foundation (CPF), the Morden Youth for Christ (YFC) will now be able to complete the basketball court portion of their backyard project fundraiser.
Kris Hansen Canada Post Local Area Manager for Southeastern Manitoba said YFC Morden was one of three organizations in his region to receive a grant.
"It gives me great pleasure to have Youth for Christ in here today as a risk grant recipient for our Community Foundation Charity for Youth and Children initiatives and fundraisers across the country. We have a cheque to donate today for YFC for $15,000 to work on their backyard space. We take great pride in doing this for our community and it really shows for my 122 offices that I have in the area, plus another 42 dealer offices. We really take pride in this. We have been fundraising all year round. It doesn't stop."
Funds are raised across Canada through grassroots efforts like the book sale happening right now in the Morden post office, or through community BBQs, or raffles to raise the $1.3 million given out to 106 organizations, like YFC Morden, this year.
Hansen noted his area is consistently in the top five fundraisers across the country each year.
"We have hundreds of applications that get sent in, if not thousands, to our to our foundation. We usually we have a review committee in Ottawa that looks after this, so it's some of our executive and some of our retirement employees that that do that but it's they're selected just based on the information that the group sent in. So at-risk youth ages 12 to 18, basketball court, which is kind of my favorite thing too..." the crowd giggled, noting his height, "Not that I had a hand in the selection, but it's just a great foundation and a great initiative to bring kids in to have a safe spot to play sports and just to get together and learn and grow."
YFC Morden Executive Director Ryan Smith shared how the funds will be used.
"We've been an organization in Morden here for about 25 years. We work with vulnerable and at-risk youth ages 12 to 18, for the most part. We have over 130 youth in our programs each week, between Morden and Pilot Mound, all expanding, so that's exciting. This backyard project is going to be a really great part of our programming. We're going to be able to build a full court basketball court in the backyard, a gazebo, and the funds from Canada Post Community Foundation are going to be central and able to building that basketball court."
Smith said this area is designed to have an impact on the kids.
"We work with youth from all different sorts of backgrounds and perspectives, and a big challenge we're constantly facing is youth struggling with mental health and anxiety. One of the big things that we've really seen is that when kids have healthy bodies and they're able to grow in areas of life whether it's sports, whether it's the fitness gym, etc that they have healthy minds. And so that's a huge priority for us; to meet the needs we see. That's a big part of what we want to do to contribute to the community."
Smith expects, thanks to this grant, for the basketball court to be ready to play on in Spring.