Grande Prairie City Council and the United Way Alberta Northwest have finalized a deal that will keep Grande Prairie’s Cool Aid Society open until at least the end of the school year.
This comes shortly after the society indicated to city hall that they were in dire need of funding after receiving a notification from Recovery Alberta Mental Health and Addiction on January 21st that their contract was set to end on March 31st, with no option for renewal.
As a result, council’s Public and Protective Services committee recommended council approve $60K in emergency funding to the Cool Aid Society to sustain operations until June 30th of this year.
Upon hearing the news, one United Way board member brought it forward, and Board Chair Amber McGuinness says the organization immediately held an emergency meeting to see how they could help.
“We had an immediate emergency board meeting to discuss allocating our funds, which we had not yet set for the 2025 year, and it aligned perfectly with our mission, and it was an easy decision, and it was voted yes by all the board members unanimously,” she says.
Council and the United Way ultimately met halfway, with the city providing $30K and United Way providing the other half, contingent on having city staff discuss long-term funding ideas with the society.
Grande Prairie Mayor Jackie Clayton says providing the money was easy for council, simply due to the nature of the society’s work, in preventing kids from ending up in a scenario where intervention and recovery are needed.
“This programming that Cool Aid Society does is very proactive, we all know that if we don’t have prevention in regards to, in particular youth programming, then we will in time need more money in intervention and recovery,” she says.
Cool Aid Society Financial Director Amanda Beret-Gerber calls the funding bump a “huge stepping stone” in getting the society through the rest of the school year; however, work is being done to ensure programming can continue to be feasible in the future.
“We’re going to work our butts off to get more than that, again, I have reservations just because losing a $16-$17,000 a month contract that we’ve had for a decade, it’s huge, that’s the program, so replacing that is going to be a challenge, but one that we’re willing to do,” she says.
Beret-Gerber says the unfortunate reality is most grants on the table at this time are for items like infrastructure and capital assets, which the society is not eligible for.
“Most of the grants that are on the table right now are infrastructure grants, or capital asset grants, and we were working really hard on creating an actual program that’s entirely mental health-driven because that would have given us access to an infrastructure type grant for the program itself,” she says.
Despite this setback, Beret-Gerber says at least two parties have indicated their intent to support programming through sponsorship agreements.
“Two major corporations are willing to essentially sponsor timeframes for our youth, so we would have like a technology six-week program, and they would sponsor that program,” she says.
Additionally, to combat the loss of provincial dollars, the Cool Aid Society has listed their Hillside location for sale, which will bring in around $135K when it’s all said and done. Still, Beret-Gerber maintains this is a temporary fix, and a second location is needed to support programming and reach across the city.
“Ultimately, we do still need two locations, because we have the outreach from being in both the north and the south, so losing that property we own is detrimental to us,” she says. “You don’t want to use it [profits] just for programming, so we do need to come up with a sustainable plan.”
Last quarter, the Cool Aid Society saw 996 youths and 230 teens accessing free programs, while paid programs serviced 125 young people.
“We have about 300 families that see us all the time, and having a no-cost program for them just taken out, that is huge,” Beret-Gerber says. “We would like to have a second facility because if we get everything up, and operational, we know that we could service 600 families monthly, and we need that in both the north and south.”
Ultimately, the society is now able to keep its doors open until at least June, and officials say talks are ongoing to ensure service levels remain the same.
