A new way to communicate

Sargent Park

West End

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/02/2024 (832 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An interesting new opportunity for learning has popped up on Sargent Avenue.

Win Centre, located at 888 Sargent Ave., is a social and game hub for young people aged eight to 17. Participants can try their hand at Rubik’s Cube tournaments, strategy games, and more, in a group setting,which paves the way for new friendships and steady communication.

You might think that a lot of places offer similar things, but many of the youth at Win Centre are new to Canada — primarily refugees from Ukraine who have settled in Winnipeg within the last year and are still getting used to speaking English with others their age.

The centre is run by Alona Oliinyk, who conducted similar activities in Ukraine.

“(We) have a big Ukrainian community, kids who came here, and their English level is so, so low. So they are not able to talk to someone in school, but they still need that, right,” Oliinyk explained. “They need peers and (to be able to) talk to them and make some new friends. So that’s why I created this centre.”

With or without the language barrier, kids are more inclined to go home and get straight onto a computer or screen of some sort, she said. Offering them a space to hang out is good for social development and mental health.

Because of this, Win Centre has heavily incorporated language into all of its activities — even when many of them focus on just using your hands. It “nurtures a child’s cognitive abilities, and fosters critical thinking and problem-solving skills,” according to its Facebook page.

”This is actually a very important part of my job … because this is not just to have fun,” Oliinyk said. “This is not just about speaking skills. This is also about impacting them. Taking them from their computers, from their mobile phones, and putting them face-to-face to each other and letting them talk.”

At the moment, Win Centre activities are only available in Ukrainian. The Centre is only open on Saturdays, with activities cycling every week, and registration must be done in advance. As many as 10 kids can be seem

Everyone is welcome to try for free, Oliinyk said, provided they speak Ukrainian, but they must eventually pay to become regular members.

Alongside the original Rubik’s Cube club, the centre hosts puzzle activities, board game sessions, and ‘Mafia’ games.

Mafia — originally known as Werewolf — is a strategy-based party game that forces players to use social deductions and calculated action/inaction to protect the hidden identities of their teammates, who are assigned roles —such as ‘murderer’ — unknown to the opposing players.

The club is new and still expanding, but Oliinyk is also working on a Mafia club for adults in the evenings, to be offered in both English and Ukrainian.

For more information, visit Win Centre’s Facebook page.