KENORA – The Ne-Chee Friendship Centre has entered into a two-year lease agreement with the Kenora Legion while they look for a feasible building to host their events.
According to Patti Fairfield, executive director of the Ne-Chee Friendship Centre, the legion decided to sell the building due to dwindling membership.
“As the older veterans and people who've been part of the legion for years start to pass on, the membership just becomes less. And so, they haven't been able to really focus a lot on recruitment, just because they've been so focused on trying to keep this building afloat,” Fairfield stated.
The lease agreement allows the legion to use the canteen space in the basement, as well as the auditorium for their Remembrance Day service, free of charge.
The Ne-Chee Friendship Centre will make use of the square footage as they prepare to move their Indigenous Student Success Program students from the centre’s satellite school at Beaver Brae Secondary School.
“They're going to have a nice big classroom on the main floor with windows, because currently, they're in the basement of our building. So that is going to be great,” said Fairfield.
The Indigenous Student Success Program helps youth ages 16 -21 acquire their high school accreditation through workshops and cultural activities.
“With our program, it's really based on their learning and the pace that they learn at," Fairfield explained. "They have the opportunity to have a teacher there to assist them while they're working on their credits. And then, with our part of the partnership, we have our education counsel and they plan a lot of activities, a lot of things around the cultural outings, and the students are able to get their high school credits as well through the things that they partake in with the Friendship Center."
The Friendship Centre integrates many of its programs into the Indigenous Student Success Program including Lifelong Care Program and Urban Aboriginal Healthy Living Program.
As part of the Lifelong Care Program, students are provided with breakfast and lunch, which they help prepare one day a week.
The Friendships Centre’s Urban Aboriginal Healthy Living Program will also be getting a dedicated room to curate its content.
Before the purchase of the legion building, Urban Aboriginal Healthy Living Program operated out of the Friendship Centre's event space, which Fairfield stated was used quite often for other programming, leaving the coordinator to fit their workshops in where there is room.
The Urban Aboriginal Healthy Living Program provides a variety of different health activities for the community like exercise workshops, cooking classes, and smoking cessation.
