Burton Cummings CC runs on volunteer power
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This article was published 23/04/2019 (2328 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Burton Cummings Community Centre is the front porch of West Alexander.
Board president Harold Martinos grew up in the community and remembers when neighbours used to sit on their porches and watch local kids play in the streets.
“Everybody knew everybody on the block. Now, all we do is sit in our air-conditioned houses,” he said. “The centre is a good place for people to get to know one another and get involved.”
Burton Cummings is located at 960 Arlington St. and was established as the West End Memorial Community Centre in 1947. In the late 1980s, the aging centre was rebuilt and expanded and in 1991 it was officially renamed renamed after the frontman of Winnipeg rock band The Guess Who — before making it big, Cummings had played sock hops at the community centre.
Aside from mini-soccer and softball funded through the City of Winnipeg’s SPIN (Sport Programs in Inner City Neighbourhoods) initiative, Martinos said the club tries to make its programming fit the needs of the community.
“We do a lot of things to keep the kids coming to the centre and whatever they need most at the time is what we’ll offer,” he said.
Last winter, the club ran a newcomer family skate program at its outdoor rink and it has previously hosted everything from water polo to cricket to badminton. The number of kids served by the community centre’s catchment area has also changed significantly with the expansion of the Health Sciences Centre.
“Our neighbourhood has actually diminished a fair bit,” he said. “We’ve probably lost 250 homes.”
The club’s weekly activity schedule includes an after-school drop-in program, adult and senior fitness classes, and pizza and movie nights. The facility and field —which has two baseball diamonds, a soccer field, tennis court, sand volleyball court and a wading pool — are also regularly used by local schools.
To make its programming as inclusive as possible, there are no registration fees for sports or other activities at Burton Cummings.
“We’ll offer something free before we’ll accept a paying person to rent the gym for two hours,” Martinos said. “Our programming comes first.”
That philosophy requires a dedicated group of volunteers.
“The biggest challenge is trying to run the operation on the funds we get. If we didn’t have the volunteers we have we’d have to close the doors,” Martinos said, adding that there are currently nine people on the board and three staff members at Burton Cummings.