Georgia Iliou
Director
Please sign the petition to see this amazing program come back to the region!!!!
The link is found at the end of this article.
A few years ago, this region was fortunate to have the Youth Fusion program. This program was the brainchild and ran by Youth Programmer Victoria Champion, when Victoria left the region Colby Robbins took over for a short time after.
This was an afterschool program for youth in Grades 4-6 that would run in both McLennan and Falher. It became so popular that the program in Falher grew to two times a week with requests of having it become three days a week.
Youth had a place to go and learn new skills, build friendships and participate in esteem building activities. The program started small and when funding became no longer available, it had grown into a loved and popular program. Youth that normally didn’t interact with each other during regular school time came together at Youth Fusion and all social status dissolved and friendships were made. Youth not involved in organized sports came together at this program.
Some of the activities were planting trees during Alberta Forestry Week at the future home of the spray park, make wind chimes out of recycled materials and after hearing from a Holistic Nutritionist we created our own healing salve out of herbs and natural ingredients.
There were movie nights, cancer awareness events, fear factor, crafts galore, and youth science festival month; these are just a few of the many things the youth accomplished during Youth Fusion!
The attached picture was published in the Family and Community Support Services Associations Calendar in 2013 at the provincial level! Youth and parents three years later are still asking for this program again, and how we can get it back in our community. Our current youth Programmer Crystal Marschner at Smoky River FCSS has been busy acquiring successful funding to give life back to Youth Fusion and have the program up and running.
Our hopes are that we are able to hire a part time programmer to start Youth Fusion again in the schools as an afterschool, and build it into a youth center for this region.
We are asking for the residents in the Smoky River Region to go on line and sign a petition in support of getting this program up and running.
The more signatures and letters of support we can get the strong the applications for funding will be, as we are presenting them to the funders.
We need your help. This takes 30 seconds of your time. If you do not have access to a public computer you are in luck, the Career Resource Centre at the Falher Library have public access computers Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
You don’t have to be a current resident of the region, or have a youth at home. You could be former resident, a grandparent and aunt or uncle, an educator, anyone can sign this petition showing support for this program!
Please go to ipetitions.com/petition/smoky-river-youth-fusion to sign in support of this program coming back to our area. Thank you for supporting our youth! They are our future!