Every summer hundreds of Edmonton playgrounds come alive with the sounds of kids playing organized games such as tug-of-war, splashing around in the spray park or learning various crafts.
It’s all done under the watchful eye of a supervisor, usually a student, who stores supplies in the Green Shack that has given its name to the city program that has become an icon over 60 years. It has become especially important in areas with vulnerable families, where it is the only organized recreation program many children get.
Lisa Shamchuk, a former “Green Shack girl” who is now a librarian says her summers spent in the low-income neighbourhoods of Londonderry and Sifton were great experience both for the kids and her.
“We were the only people around. Sometimes parents would send them out in the morning with no hat, no food, no anything. … I didn’t know what they would do if we weren’t around at the park.” For Shamchuk, the job complemented her studies towards a B.Ed, teaching her many skills for dealing with kids with special needs, discipline issues and above all being flexible.
This year the broad brush strokes of provincial budget cuts – the elimination of STEP (Student Temporary Employment Program) – put the fun at risk for several thousand children in vulnerable neighbourhoods. But acting as an honest broker, Edmonton Community Foundation (ECF) brought together social agencies, the city and the province and played a big role in preserving most of the funding for Green Shack.
“It wasn’t about money, but how people work together and how the community works together. The main ingredient is good people trying to work to make sure that every dollar gets stretched and pulled in the best way.”
While ECF is widely known for managing philanthropic endowment funds and disbursing grants to non-profit agencies, part of its mandate is to act as a catalyst to strengthen the community, which can mean taking on an active role as an advocate, as the Green Shack story shows.
In March, the province cancelled the $7.1-million STEP program in its austerity budget. This meant $200,000 less for Green Shack, which is about 10 per cent of its budget.
Months before the budget announcement, Martin Garber-Conrad, ECF’s chief executive officer, had been invited to a meeting with Premier Alison Redford and Human Services Minister Dave Hancock for feedback on the province’s social policy framework, which focused on alleviating poverty in vulnerable communities. Garber-Conrad had a lot of positive things to say about the policy and how it would benefit the community.
When the budget cuts were implemented, it wasn’t immediately clear that vulnerable communities would be affected. But the alarm was sounded when agencies realized that the end of STEP would directly impact the Green Shack program, and could force serious reductions in recreation hours where they were needed most.
After talking with the city and various social agencies, Garber-Conrad contacted Hancock and informed him that the particular cut conflicted with the province’s social policy. The government listened, and restored $150,000 to Green Shack for this summer. “They (the province) made a commitment not to hurt vulnerable Albertans, and we made it clear it could have this effect,” says Garber-Conrad.
Liz O’Neill, executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Edmonton, helped identify the communities that need Green Shack the most, and in the end the program was actually improved. For instance, Green Shack operated for the first time in Africa Centre, where it served 190 kids per day in the old Wellington School in north Edmonton. The program means a lot to recent immigrants as the kids could lose English language skills and the feeling of belonging to the community when they are out of school for the summer.
In McCauley, substitute teachers spent some time at Green Shacks helping kids who had been struggling academically. All of this happened after the city, the province and various agencies sat down with EFC acting as a broker to bring them all together, O’Neill says. “It wasn’t about money, but how people work together and how the community works together. The main ingredient is good people trying to work to make sure that every dollar gets stretched and pulled in the best way.”
“It was a win-win for everybody because we had a positive relationship with the government and provided good information to them about what’s happening in the community and they were open to fixing the problem.”
Garber-Conrad says that rather than playing a politically oppositional role, ECF has established a positive relationship with the government. “When you have a positive relationship with somebody, you can actually talk to them. When something is wrong, you can call and try to sort it out. We don’t get significant government funding so the risk of raising these matters is less than it might be for others.”
With contacts in the city bureaucracy, the foundation was able to broker the deal by signing off on the $150,000 grant and then directing it to the right people, a process they were able to do in hours or days rather than the weeks or months it would generally take given the regular grant approval process. And time was essential as the spring was coming and students had to be hired.
“It was a win-win for everybody because we had a positive relationship with the government and provided good information to them about what’s happening in the community and they were open to fixing the problem.”
It is a one-time grant, but it provides a year to figure out alternative sources of funding to keep the program going. Dee Dee Carr, supervisor of community recreation programs for the city, said they are working feverishly with community groups and other funders to keep the program at least at the same level next summer.
Allan Bolstad, executive director of the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues, doubts that the funding would have happened without the intervention of ECF. It was particularly helpful that Garber-Conrad could supply the government with details about which neighbourhoods were most in need of this support.
“I think that helped to satisfy the province’s concerns that this money would be going to the right people and the right communities,” Bolstad says. “They really helped make this work.”
