At the end of this week, the Youth Resource Centre (YRC) located on Joyce Avenue will close its doors permanently, not out of a lack of love or community need, but because the board of Powell River Child, Youth and Family Services Society (PRCYFSS) was denied its funding request for a BC community gaming grant.
The YRC has been offering a safe place for teenagers for the past year. It was started by PRCYFSS with a one-year federal funding grant. That grant ran out in December 2012. The program had an annual operating budget of about $100,000.
Tracy Tunstall, program coordinator for YRC, received the news earlier this month that the grant had been denied.
“We were very hopeful,” said Tunstall. “The board at youth and family services had hedged their bet on it. To receive that news was just devastating.”
Tunstall said they were able to get some assistance from Nicholas Simons, MLA for Powell River-Sunshine Coast.
“He was able to find out some insights for us,” she said. “We are going to be asking for a reconsideration and we’re hopeful. It‘s going to take a while, but if the reconsideration is denied then there is nowhere to go from there. That’s it. We’re crossing our fingers.”
Next week, Tunstall and volunteers will pack everything up at the Joyce Avenue location and put it into storage while they wait for the space they were granted at Oceanview Education Centre to be renovated. The board of PRCYFSS had hoped to move to the new location and be able to offer the same levels of service as YRC had at its previous location with after school programs being run four days a week. Without the community gaming grant, trying to run the program on just volunteer fundraising efforts will be difficult, Tunstall said.
Dolly McEachren is treasurer for Powell River Lions Club and regularly volunteers at YRC. “I think it’s a real shame if it goes down,” said McEachren “It’s a lifeline for those kids. I went through that whole thing of nowhere to go. For some of these kids it’s all they have. It’s not good at home.”
