The walls and the floors are fantastic but it's the hand dryers in the newly renovated bathrooms that blow me away.
The St. Albert Youth Community Centre celebrated its grand reopening on Thursday evening. The 15-year-old non-profit organization operates as a program room, mentorship facilitator, hangout spot and study help. In recent years the facility had gradually moved into decrepitude.
So executive director Brenda O'Neill put out the call for help. Indeed the place looks great but she said it was so important for her to redo the bathrooms so that the centre's members would be encouraged to keep it clean.
"The washrooms were completely renovated. We want the kids to use proper hygiene."
The new hand dryers have certainly achieved that, she avows. Instead of holding your hands under a motion sensor-activated blower, you hold your hands down in the wall-mounted contraption that first looks like a strange and small diaper change table. Gravity drips the water down and the jets take care of the rest.
"I love the fact that they love to wash their hands now. There's only one reason they do."
To put the finishing touches on the upgrades in the programming and recreation area, O'Neill is also putting out a call to visual artists to help with a unique project, one that involves used neckties that she hopes to get donated: "the good, the bad and the ugly" as she puts it. Cash donations, she added, would always be appreciated too.
"We are a non-profit," she mentioned, matter-of-factly.
The centre is located in Grandin Park Plaza. You can learn more by calling 780-418-0678 or visiting www.saycc.ca. Of course, you can always stop by and check it out for yourself.
Transportation for seniors a big deal
As its name suggests, the Seniors Assisted Transportation Society of Greater Edmonton does operate in St. Albert. There are several clients in this city but an incongruous number of drivers.
Anna Der, the organization's executive director, hopes to change all of that with a call for help. She is looking for enthusiastic volunteers who enjoy driving even through the winter months and can spare as little as three hours a month to help get area low-income seniors to and from appointments and chores.
"The more drivers you have, the more elders you can serve," she says, indicating that there is no shortage of clients. "StatsCan says that over half of the seniors over 65 earn under $30,000 so there must be a lot of elders around who need the service."
She added that she wants to help more people with transportation issues but she needs the roster of drivers to be filled out first.
"We don't really want to run an ad to recruit elders if we don't have the drivers. That would be mean!" she laughed. "They can phone up all they want, but they can't get a ride."
To help sweeten the deal, the drivers are reimbursed $10 for the cost of gas used on a round trip that takes less than two hours, or $20 for over two hours.
You can learn more by calling 780-732-1221 or visiting www.satsofedmonton.org.
