By Cheryl Jahn

Seniors’ organizations struggle without grant funding

Dec 8, 2023 | 3:24 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – “I am pleased to give you a check for $3,500.”

It was a day of giving recently for the Prince George Community Foundation. The target this year is the six seniors centers in the city.

“We know that there is a need, especially in Prince George, for all of them to receive additional support. I know they rely on donations to continue on with their programming, and that’s not always easy for them to get donations,” says Mindy Stroet with the Foundation. “So we thought that this was a great opportunity to support the seniors in Prince George, which are really pivotal to our community.”

The North Central Seniors Association was one of the many organizations to receive gaming grants in the past.

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“We used to get $25,000 and like, and we went down to $22,000, $21,000, I think $10,000, $5,000, $2,000,” explains Maurice Lapointe, Past President of the Association. Then all of a sudden, nothing,” says Maurice Lapointe, Past President of the Association. “We worked many hours, many days to fill those applications in. And there was it we get nothing for two years in a row, so we just quit applying.

Lapointe says the money from the grants went to a very important cause.

“We were applying for grants for meals for seniors, for our organization, and now we have to go out and ask organizations and companies and people to help us out with that so we can have our meals at a price that’s reasonable for seniors. So this coming from Mindy today is absolutely a blessing.”

And he says when the number is diminished year over year, it was a sick feeling.

“Well, your heart kind of falls through your stomach. And now we got to start chasing money from different grants that are easier, that are like you can get a little simpler, I guess, if you want to say that.”

And it’s the same story for all seniors.

“Community organizations have been working hard, especially on the Meals on Wheels program, talking to the minister directly, talking to the staff in the Ministry of Health and making the argument that it needs to be funded. It needs to be a core program not based on the ability to pay by a seniors organization,” says Shirley Bond, Seniors Advocate. S

he says she’s met with the seniors’ organization and knows the distress they’re under with the lack of funding.