Oceanside not-for-profit signals 'SOS' to keep youth, family, and senior programs running
Greenhall (pictured) said each program has a capacity of 25 youth, and it’s a weekly occurrence for them to hit the cap. (Lauryn Mackenzie/ CHLY 101.7fm)
Since 1968, the Society of Organized Services has been working to meet the needs of school children, families and seniors throughout the Oceanside area. Now the organization needs money to make sure those programs and services can continue.
Society of Organized Services (SOS) runs more than 20 different programs for all ages including seniors advocacy services, tax return service for low income individuals and families, low cost grad wear for graduating high schoolers, and homeless prevention services.
As well they run the SOS Thrift Shop in Parksville.
All the programs are run by volunteers at low or no cost for the participants, and come with free meals.
To make sure all the programs and services can continue to run, SOS has started their new For Our Families campaign with a goal of $150,000.
Keith Greenhall has been volunteering at the SOS Thrift Shop for almost a year now.
“You feel like you've got a family here because it doesn't matter if you have any stress you're going through, there's always somebody who'll put a shoulder out and give you a nod and go, ‘don't worry about it.’” Greenhall said. “It is a family, no one ever raises a voice at any volunteers or any other staff, they're all so calm, and, and that's what makes it special.”
The main funder for the SOS programming is the thrift shop that runs on volunteers and donated clothing and household items.
Along with being there for each other, he said a part of volunteering means being there for the customers who come into the shop.
“[If] one of the customers comes in and has a hard time, one of them staff will go out and talk, and that is what I like. It's not like ‘I'm too busy to do this,’ it's like everybody will give time for everybody else, and that makes this place special, I think, more than the other places,” Greenhall said. “I've worked at some of the others as well, and this is the one I've stayed at. So I think it's magical here, and it helps, and it helps the community.”
In addition to volunteering at the thrift store three days a week, he also volunteers as a cook for SOS’s youth programs. He cooks for the School Night Out Program for those in grade seven and eight on Mondays and he also cooks for the Youth Open Space program for students in grade nine to 12 on Wednesdays.
“I enjoy the cooking side, and I enjoy the side where you get to watch them make stained glass window things out of plastic and ‘Shrinky Dinks,’” he said. “I'd never heard of one before, but apparently it's a proper thing.”
He said it’s nice to be able to watch the youth grow up during their time within the programs and he’ll go the extra mile for the children even if it means making extra food because he knows for some, it might be the only proper meal they’ll get that week.
“If I'm cooking 25 burgers, I have to do 50 burgers because they'll all want extra food, but it's nice for that as well, because some of the kids, and I'm sure of this group, they don't get enough food,” he said. “So it's nice having this group because it keeps them off the streets, gives them a purpose, gives them something to do.”
Greenhall said each program has a capacity of 25 youth, and it’s a weekly occurrence for them to hit the cap.
Lissa Alexander is the Communications Manager at Society of Organized Services. She tells CHLY the money raised from their new campaign will go into running the program and making sure the needs of the community are met.
“So when we went to Romper Room, that was one of the School Night Out programmes, the money pays for those outings, for those kids to go on those adventures, for families to go places,” Alexander said. “We go to farms, Butterfly World, the North Island Recovery Centre, and mini golfing. We provide meals in each of those programmes, so it goes towards preparing those meals. Our volunteers make those meals, but we have to buy the food.”
She explained that their main source of funding comes from the SOS Thrift Shop along with a small amount of government funding and program income, but they still heavily rely on financial donations.
“We are constantly changing our programmes with the changing needs of the community, and just seeing that they're still viable, and that they're still needed,” she said. “Most of the programmes, the children, youth, and family programmes are at high demand, and many of our other programmes are at high demand.”
For the first time, SOS is holding a charity golf tournament on June 6 of this year, at the Morningstar Golf Club to raise money for their For Our Families campaign.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.