Earl Grey Community Centre putting families first

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This article was published 23/04/2019 (2327 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As community centres in Winnipeg are increasingly pressured to adopt an operational model more aligned with a for-profit business than a neighbourhood-serving organization, Earl Grey Community Centre has kept its focus on grassroots programming.

Sue-Ann Campbell, the general manager of Earl Grey, said the centre at the intersection of Cockburn St. North and Garwood Avenue is bustling with young families daily.

“We base most of our programming on keeping families together right inside our community,” Campbell told The Sou’wester. “It’s always been Earl Grey’s mandate.”  

The club was founded in 1936 and was first housed in a boxcar at Pembina Highway and Garwood Avenue and the current community centre was built in 1966.

With an operating budget around $850,000, Campbell said Earl Grey offers programming so “families can be together for everything.”

From Tuesday through Thursday, Earl Grey offers a “Ride and Play program” for $3 where caregivers and children from zero to five years old can spend the morning and early afternoon participating in fun activities and crafts.

“It’s by far our most popular program,” Campbell said.

The community centre also offers a morning, lunch, and after-school drop-in program for kids in the neighbourhood. Participating in the three programs costs $5 a day, or $20 a month for just the lunch program. Campbell said about 25 kids take part in the morning session, 60 for lunch, and between 80 and 100 for afterschool.

The program has been offered for about five years.

“We staff according to our numbers. We have a really big building so it’s not as though we’re confined to space. The first year we offered it we had about 15 kids and we’re up to between 80 and 100 right now,” she said.

“There was such a need for people to have somewhere for their kids to go and we’re literally 15 feet from a school. For kids to come over it’s easy and there’s no commute, and although we have a daycare attached to us and a daycare in the school, they’ve both been full for years and years.
“It’s to close the gap for families in our neighbourhood.”

Earl Grey also offers in-house mini-soccer, pond hockey, learn to skate, mini-basketball, and karate. Instructors in fencing and kung fu also rent space to provide programming, and the community centre is associated with Winnipeg South End United soccer and the Winnipeg Minor Basketball Association.

“We definitely encourage sports, but we’re finding, and for us in particular at our club, we have really large families, we have lower income families, we need to offer things where everyone can come,” Campbell said.

She estimates club usage at 93 per cent and with all that wear and tear on the club, infrastructure is one of the biggest challenges for Earl Grey. The club’s income gets a modest boost from birthday and social hall rentals, but securing funding for major improvements is always a task. The club is in need of a new sidewalk, which is estimated at over $130,000 on top of general upkeep and capital improvements.

“We’ve been stuck in a five-year kitchen/office reno debate, Campbell said. “We paid $40,000 to have an architect draw up all of our stuff, and figure everything out. We can’t secure the funding to do the project.

“The rest of it, we just work hard to make sure it happens.”