Fernie Kids Club Society has been hard at work since the last blog post, even if you haven't seen any action around town. You may have run into us at the fall registration fair in the Community Centre - I hear we were quite famous for our gummy bears :)

For the last many months we have been talking about opening a youth drop-in. We would love to see a facility here in Fernie that is open to all teens free of charge that is a fun & safe place to hang out with cool and informed young adults running the programming. We had been putting quite a bit of energy into this vision until September when we were suddenly stopped in our tracks.

Our mentor from Boys & Girls Clubs of Canada reminded us firmly of two important facts:

1. A youth program will only be successful if youth are directly involved from the beginning
2. Fernie has a glaring need for after-school care

So we went back to the drawing board and did a little soul searching. As much as we'd love to open a youth drop-in program right now, we are sure that it would run out of steam very quickly without a committed group of teens directing us on what they want to see. Sadly, this vision will have to wait a little longer.

And we recommitted ourselves to the idea of opening a high-quality after-school care program. This is what the community seems to be screaming out for.

PARENTS - could you please complete our short needs assessment survey online here? We need some data about who needs care and what kind of care families need most.
Thank you very, very much. Please tell other families to fill out the survey too.

And stay tuned to this space as our plans develop!