Children’s Centre to open in January
A Whistler-Blackcomb Foundation grant of $150,000 to the Dandelion Daycare Society will help fund the completion of the new Whistler-Blackcomb Foundation Spring Creek Children’s Centre, which is scheduled to open next month.
The project ran into cost overruns and needed additional funds to complete the facility. Without the foundation grant the extra costs would have been passed on to the families using the facility.
The facility will be able to provide spaces for 74 children per day for kids under the age of six, helping to ease the wait to get into existing daycare programs.
"The foundation’s grant helped to ensure that daycare fees are not increased for the children’s families," said Marion Hardy, director of childcare services for the Children’s Centre. "I’m sure all our parents will greatly appreciate that and frankly, without the foundation, we wouldn’t have been able to move past the lock-up stage."
That latest grant brings the total of foundation money going to the centre to $400,000. The foundation contributed $250,000 to the Children’s Centre in the spring of 2000, which enabled the society to apply to the provincial Ministry of Social Development and Economic Security for a matching $250,000 grant.
The new Spring Creek daycare will open on Jan. 2, 2002.
"A few years ago the Whistler-Blackcomb Foundation recognized the critical need for daycare space in Whistler and Pemberton," said Louise Lundy, the executive director of the foundation. "In the last two years, the foundation has given out grants for three daycare centres totalling $860,000."
The other recipients were the Teddy Bear Daycare at Maurice Young Millennium Place, and Pemberton’s only daycare centre, which without new funding was would have had to close in the summer of 2000.
The Whistler-Blackcomb Foundation raises money through the Founder’s Pass Program, and two popular events – the Whistler-Blackcomb Foundation Golf Classic held in September and the Telus Mobility Winter Classic held in January. Since 1992, the foundation has raised over $2 million dollars for registered non-profit programs, becoming the largest contributor to the Sea to Sky community.
