When 10-year-old math whiz Devon studies for school tests, he does so perched on a couch in the shabby Main St. hotel room where he has lived for the past year with his father.
The cramped conditions are a far cry from the gymnasium where Devon rushed around playing tag with about 25 other children Thursday night, before the freckled kid sat down and explained what drew him there.
Banman is a participant in the Salvation Army Weetamah Centre’s Kids Club. “Weetamah” means “Go tell them” in Cree. The weekly after-school program at the Logan Avenue facility runs on a $3,500 annual budget by a handful of volunteers and Salvation Army staff members.
“(The children) are seriously impacted by poverty,” said Robert Russell, pastor and executive director of the community centre. “Some of them face situations where their families are evicted. One of our families arrived back from a holiday and found all their stuff on the street.”
On Thursday night, the Salvation Army invited reporters to interview children at the Kids Club.
Over a dinner of fries and chicken nuggets, some of which were playfully tossed around the cafeteria by kids eager to tease their friends, children clamoured for attention from the visitors.
Russell said there’s been a lot of media attention in the last month on violence involving youth living in Winnipeg’s core area.
Russell said the Salvation Army wanted to highlight some programming which attempts to combat the rampant poverty that affects many of the children who live in the area.
Last year, the centre lost a federal grant for children’s programming worth about $100,000 and had to lay off three full-time and part-time staff workers.
The gap has since been filled by volunteers, said Russell, although youth programming is down from five nights per week to three nights.
“A lot of it comes down to building relationships in our community,” said Russell, over the yells of kids playing a spirited game of tag. “If we’re going to be an agent of change, we need the resources to engage. And that’s what we’re doing; we’d just like to do it more, having the capacity to connect with as many families and children (as we can) over time.”
Devon said he doesn’t mind waiting for his school bus every day in a Main Street parking lot, or eating his bowl of Cheerios in his hotel room each morning. The Millennium Library, he points out, has a children’s section where he sometimes reads and surfs the Internet when he can’t make it to the community centre.
But Devon has lots of ideas for improving life for those who live in the core area.
He dreams of a bank where withdrawal fees are only $3 per month, not the $8.50 he said his father pays at his local Main St. branch.
“It’s money people work so hard to get. People could use that money to spend on their kids or on their groceries,” he said, pausing thoughtfully. “You can’t make the bank fees free, because then you’d be giving money out.. .but you could make them charge a lot less.’’
By Gabrielle Giroday
Winnipeg Free Press, Nov. 2006 Reprinted with permission
