Half-a-million short

The funds Children’s Centre Thunder Bay receives from the United Way each year is only a small portion of the centre’s budget, but it is vital in helping people on the frontlines.

“People need help immediately when they’re in a struggle,” said the centre’s executive director Tom Walters.

The Children’s Centre receives about $75,000 from the United Way Thunder Bay chapter each year. That money goes towards their public education sessions and walk-in counselling clinic, which sees between 600 and 700 people a year, Walters said.
 
He added the two programs are what he sees as preventative services and if they don’t receive the necessary funding, those programs will have to be scaled back.

“When that’s lost, what happens is people struggle more,” he said. “Their problems become more severe and our wait list grows.”

With two weeks left in the 2010 United Way campaign, the organization is still $500,000 short of its $2.47 million goal and campaign chairman Wayne Fletcher said they’re now relying on individual donations.

That last 10 per cent always happens in the last two weeks of December,” he said. “Hopefully people come through like they always do.”

If they don’t reach their goal, Fletcher said it means there will be agencies like the Children’s Centre that don’t run programs.

“The more that we do raise, then that means the allocations can fund more programs, which helps out the whole city,” he said.

Walters said they could look for other sources of funding if the United Way campaign can’t deliver it’s usual donation, but there are already so many other groups looking for monetary donations in Thunder Bay.

“The United Way is a mass appeal and has a huge impact and a great capacity for people to sue their charitable dollars well,” he said.

The United Way funds 28 agencies in Thunder Bay and the outcome of the campaign determines what programs and services are available in the community.