By J.M.Lee
Athletics for Kids has been a registered Canadian charity in British Columbia since 2002. Its mission is to ensure that all kids in BC, regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds, have the opportunity to access sports and play.
“Our Sport4Life grant program is designed to be inclusive, allowing us to assess the family’s financial need,” Valerie Gosselin, Executive Director of Athletics4Kids, explains. “Once we deem that a family qualifies based on their net household income, we issue a grant to cover the child’s registration fees to the sports organization where the child is enrolled in a sporting program. We cover any sport you can think of. We cover over 55 different kinds of sports, from soccer to gymnastics to hockey, ensuring that every child has a chance to play and be part of our community.”
Athletics4Kids covers seasonal, year-round, team, and individual sports for school-aged kids aged five to eighteen years old.
To date, Athletics4Kids has provided over 14,000 sports grants to kids in need since 2002.
“We issue up to $450 per child per year, and some kids may receive more than one grant throughout the year for year-round sports like gymnasticsand martial arts to ensure that the child will participate all year long. The grants come from various sources: individual donors, corporate donors, community foundations, and fundraisers from events we host. We have a beautiful gala every May, our flagship fundraiser and our biggest, the Sport4Life Gala. We have a golf tournament in Surrey in July, and a matching campaign at the end of the year that runs for two months (November and December). We also have third-party events organized and hosted on our behalf, such as the Fishing Derby with the District of North Vancouver Fire Fighters, in September. All of this support sustains our Sport4Life grant program which runs all over British Columbia. Last year, we worked within 67 communities in the province. We are mainly concentrated in the Lower Mainland, with Surrey being one of the highest funded areas due to relatively higher child poverty levels, and higher immigrant and refugee populations. We partner with many social service organizations which work with families directly and we are pleased that many families can benefit from our Athletics4Kids program. From our research via conversations with families, we see that sports are an area where kids want to participate to have fun and make friends, and build critical life skills such as discipline, patience and teamwork. Children learn how to be good team players, and they build self-esteem and confidence which transfers to other parts of their lives. Thus, engaging in sports helps kids in other areas, including academic performance. Teachers tell us their kids get better in school because of sports. So the benefits of sports are endless. It involves the families and even the whole community. During the COVID-19 episode, many kids became lonely because the pandemic made their minds less occupied and their bodies less active. Sports lower stress for kids because they have a healthy outlet to focus their energy on and keep them out of trouble and away from drugs and gangsterism.”
Recently, many businesses have struggled with funding, so finding resources to support Athletics4Kids has become our primary objective. We count on many volunteers to carry out our mission. We are beyond grateful to the members of the South Asian community who are willing to support our initiative monthly. Just $200 will put a child in the game, or $17/month, but any amount goes a long way to support kids in your neighborhood”.
For parents interested in applying for a grant for their kids, visit www.a4k.ca and click on Apply for a grant.
