The Boys and Girls Club of Cochrane and Area (BGCCA) have unveiled a brand new kitchen after four days of an ‘intense extreme makeover.’
“We serve approximately 68,000 healthy snacks each year between our two clubs and our day home. That is a lot of snacks that we are preparing and serving in our kitchen,” said Jenny Strickland, director of operations for the BGCCA.
She said the previous kitchen at their 5th Avenue location was ‘pretty old’ and had deteriorated over the years. The BGCCA applied for funding from the President’s Choice Children’s Charity and were granted $30,000 towards the new kitchen.
But Strickland explained that as they began to do the planning for the renovations, they realized the kitchen was ‘not accessible in its current state’ and was ‘tight and tiny’ without enough room to use the space for programs for kids.
They decided to push out a kitchen wall and renovated the bathrooms as well, this made the scope of their project bigger, and Strickland explained they needed to increase the funding to make it happen.
She said Excel Homes donated $20,000 towards the project and also thousands of dollars more in ‘in-kind labour’ with trades that Excel normally works with. Strickland said the Cochrane Foundation donated $5,000 towards appliances and they also received support from Mark’s No Frills.
“We have a major renovation coming in at a fraction of the what it would normally cost to do. It has made it achievable,” she said. “It really is a major team effort and community collaboration that is helping make this happen.”
The entire kitchen was gutted and Strickland said some of the new features include soft closing drawers so fingers can’t get slammed, new cabinets, more functionality built into the kitchen, an island to program around and all new appliances.
Strickland said that the volunteers worked around the clock for four days and that they had a ‘time lapse camera’ in place to document the process. They showed some of it at the ‘big reveal’ Feb. 24 and eventually it will be edited and placed on YouTube.
The kitchen at the club has become more than just a place to prepare and serve snacks, according to Strickland, explaining that it is also where they teach kids and youth how to prepare healthy nutritious food giving them the ‘skills that they can move forward with and apply at home and throughout life.’
“The kids at the club, they love to be involved in the kitchen. They want to learn how to bake, how to prepare healthy snacks and it is really great to expand programming into that space to give them that solid grounding for success.”
For more information visit bgccochrane.ca.
