L’Arche Stratford has received a grant of $4,000 from the Municipality of West Perth thanks to their Community Grant Program.
“L’Arche is a nonprofit organization that supports adults with developmental disabilities in Huron and Perth Counties,” said Wendy Gray, the fundraising lead with the organization. “We are people with and without developmental disabilities that share life together.”
The $4,000 grant will be going towards the L'Arche Be Belong Become campaign. This campaign will see a community hub built in Stratford.
“In 2017 a property was purchased at 426 Brittania Street in Stratford, the old Montessori school,” said Gray. “It was purchased with the knowledge and the desire of the community to grow and to welcome new people into our community to support them. When COVID hit it was decided that renovating the old school wasn’t financially viable. So the decision was made to tear it down and rebuild.”
The plan is now to build a 15,000 square foot fully accessible community hub. The building will include eight supported independent living units, two activity centres, and a huge kitchen for meals. The building will also house all the administrative offices.
“This build is important because we will own the building which makes us less dependent on the instability of renting some of the homes for our community members,” said Gray.
Currently L’Arche supports roughly 25 people that live in six homes in Stratford. The organization also helps support approximately 50 people for programming and activities, but the demand is growing.
“There are a lot of people living out there that need support,” said Gray. “But there just isn’t the space or capacity so when we build this building our capacity for living space will increase by 25 percent, and it will also help decrease our waiting list for programs and activities by 56 percent.”
L’Arche approached West Perth council about grant funding in October, specifically about the municipal community grant program. Created in 2021, the program was formed to create a transparent process for requesting financial support from the Municipality.
“We are extremely grateful to the Municipality of West Perth for the grant,” said Gray. “We are in the process of getting construction going as soon as the weather permits, so this grant will likely be used to help offset some of the permit and site development costs.”
On Monday, West Perth Coun. Nicholas Vink made a motion to approve the recommendation from Municipal staff as it related to the Municipal Community Grant program. The motion was for council to approve allocations of $3,500 to the Fullarton Centennial Park Board, $5,000 to Mitchell District High School, $3,000 to Mitchell Minor Sports, $500 to the Legion Wreath Donation, and the $4,000 to L’Arche and that council direct staff to repeal the donation policy. Council members posed questions about annual partnerships between community groups and the municipality.
“When we go back to the intent of the policy, it was to uncover historic partnerships, and I think we have succeeded in doing that,” said Chief Administrative Officer Daniel Hobson. “For that example, where we are working with an agreement, we know we have to get the agreements done with user groups, and we will bring them to council when they are needed for approval. There could be some one offs for requests which will be brought back to council but there is also the sponsorship and advertising program.”
During Monday’s meeting, council also voted in favour of discontinuing the program.
As for the L’Arche build, there are no firm timelines on the project as it will take some time to build a fully accessible facility.