Service club reaches out to inner city youth

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It all began in 1999 when a group of Aboriginal businessmen got together to talk about what they could do to help inner city kids in their neighbourhood. Since then, the Regina Aboriginal Kin Club been busy raising money for sport and recreation programs that encourage youth to become more involved in their community.

"When we first started, we were giving donations to a lot of people like individual hockey players or hockey teams or whatever from the First Nations around Regina. We found that we just simply weren't big enough to handle that," said club president Brian Sklar. "So we had to change our focus to just strictly inner city Regina. And we found we've been able to accomplish a lot more, mainly because most of the people living in the inner city in Regina are from the First Nations from around the Regina area anyway. So we are helping the people that we're supposed to be helping. And when we concentrated in the Regina inner city, well, of course, then we can have more hands-on involvement in our projects. We can see where our funds are going."

Some of the Aboriginal Kin Club's crowning achievements include launching clubs for running, wrestling and synchronized swimming for youth between the ages of eight to 20. A girls' cheerleading team was also created after a teacher from Wascana high school approached the club for funding.

"The boys have football teams, soccer teams ...but there wasn't very much for girls. So she said, 'Well , why don't we put together a cheerleading squad,'" Sklar explained. "These people that are on this squad have to attain a certain grade point average. They've got to take care of their school studies first. So these are 24 very motivated young women and whenever we do little fundraiser things like hot dog sales and things that they can be involved in, they show up and pitch in and help. It's really nice to have that youth component involved."

The club plans to partner up with St. Luke's school to develop a sport and education program. Sklar also hopes to set up a music program sometime next year.

Although the club receives some support from organizations such as the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority, SaskPower and SaskEnergy, the number of requests for funding often exceed the amount of money it can provide.

"Our requests range from requests for funding for educational projects, sports projects, of course, recreation projects and we just have to look at them on a case by case basis ... Unlike other organizations like us, we have way more requests than we have money and that's the toughest part. If we could raise more money, well, we could do a whole lot more than we are. But we're small, we're poor and we just do the best we can with the funds that we have to work with," Sklar said. "That means holding raffles and that sort of thing and it's pretty hard to get up over about $10,000 to $20,000 in fundraising a year and that could be used up in two or three requests."

Sklar said the Regina Aboriginal Kin Club is unique because its members and volunteers are from the inner city, making it easier for them to relate to youth in the community.

"What we've done is gotten right down into the community. A lot of the people that belong to our club actually live in the 'hood and it gives us a little different perspective on things that may be some of the other service clubs don't have ...you're one of them, so they feel perfectly comfortable working with our people. They don't suspect anything when you walk in because they've seen you walking down the street. They've grown up with you so they trust you."