Special donation helps youth center stay on budget

By Jolene Perron
A donation of 12 computers is helping an Amherstburg youth centre maintain their yearly budget.
When government funding is out of the picture and only half of the budget is guaranteed, The House of Shalom Youth Centre’s executive program director Holly Kirk-McLean is always left questioning how long they’ll be able to keep the doors open. The youth centre relies on community support to make nearly half of their budget, not to mention to help supply additional equipment.
Computers for Kids operations manager, Seamus Callaghan helped assist the youth centre by supplying 12 computers for the youth to work on their school work.
“We here at Computers for Kids are dedicated to transforming unwanted computers into educational tools for children in need,” said Callaghan. “One of the greatest ways to help kids in the community is by assisting an organization like House of Shalom with their after school computer lab. This allows us to help multiple children at once and build a great partnership with one of the oldest after school programs in the community.”
The House of Shalom has been an operating youth centre in Amherstburg for over 40 years. Without the assistance from Callaghan, the youth centre would have continued operating with 6-year-old computers that rarely operated properly due to budget cuts. The House of Shalom would not be able to accord the purchasing of their technology from their operating budget.
“The expensive computers, upkeep, maintenance, etc. would really take away from the main program so the bottom line is without that type of community support, that’s just one service that we couldn’t offer on our own,” said John Sutton, executive director for the House of Shalom and The Big Brothers Big Sisters Foundation. “So we always look for those types of partnerships and ways to provide more and better services without increasing our overall budget expenses and Computers for Kids helped us do that.”
The United Way has funded the youth centre $91,100 for the 2013-2014 year. The entire operating budget for the youth center is $185,520, and they began their year with a $94,400 deficit. This is the yearly story for the youth centre and is the reason why they rely on community assistance and donations to keep their doors open. With donations such as the computers from Computers for Kids, their budget will be significantly impacted.
“There has been quite the economic downturn in this area and so the House was faced with the difficult choice as funding was cut,” said Sutton. “Sooner or later there’s nothing left to cut and so they were in danger of actually having to close their doors so therefore took a unique look at things.”
Things started to turn around when the House of Shalom teamed up with Big Brothers Big Sisters. Sutton is a part time executive director for the House of Shalom. He works alongside Kirk-McLean. Sutton is always “just a phone call away” even if he isn’t always physically there.
“When the economy goes south, one of the nice things is seeing how people can get creative and reach out and support each other,” said Kirk-McLean. “When you look at Computers for Kids, what they did for us here is huge because all our computers were dying, they all needed to be upgraded, we had kids coming in using our own personal computers because they couldn’t do anything on the ones we had.”
The youth centre’s budget is broken up into municipal funding, in house fundraisers and reserve funds. Sutton said it’s mainly United Way, community support and their own fundraising efforts that allow them to keep their doors open.
“Sometimes people get it in their head that charities are doing better than they are or that they’re ok where they’re at,” said Kirk-McLean. “It’s not until you kind of get in to this business that you kind of see what can happen.”
Kirk-McLean and Sutton said it is critical to keep their doors open in a community that needs it. Kirk-McLean said studies have been done in support and recognition of youth centres which find they impact youth and a community in a way that is “unexplainable.”
“At this point we are able to keep the doors open and that’s the bottom line,” said Kirk-McLean. “Making sure that they are open for the kids and are open at a time that makes sense for them to be here.”