Community Foundation of Lethbridge and Southwestern Alberta awards thousands of dollars to organizations through government fund

The Community Foundation of Lethbridge and Southwestern Alberta have announced the recipients of the Government of Canada’s Community Service Recovery Fund awarding over $600,000 to 21 different organizations to help them recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.   

“This is really important. You know, we all suffered through the pandemic. Everybody’s come out of the pandemic differently. The charitable sector continues to struggle, whether it’s, you know, increased costs, lack of donations, just to the increased cost of living we’re currently experiencing. We had over 40 applications for $600,000, so there was definitely a lot of demand for this money. It was a really difficult decision for our committee to make as to who would get the funding.”

One of the successful applicants was the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation in Coaldale. Colin Weir, Managing Director for the Birds of Prey, explains how the money will help them in the long run.   

“We were absolutely delighted when we did get the good news. And for us, it really is a game changer and related to the pandemic. One of the things that our site does not have since it was built back in the late 1980’s, we’ve got no broadband Internet connection on site. So it’s difficult for us to even and apply for funding from the site. But more importantly, we couldn’t actually connect over the Internet with a lot of schools that wanted to do virtual programming. So this is really going to improve our ability for outreach across the region.”

The Community Services Recovery Fund is also delivered through different United Way’s across the country. The United Way of Lethbridge is awarding over $300,000 to six projects.