By Curtis Galbraith

Community

Provincial grant for Sunrise House a ‘big help’ for building new shelter

Feb 10, 2022 | 6:00 AM

There is just under $2 million left to raise to pay for a replacement for Grande Prairie’s Sunrise House Youth Emergency Shelter.

The Alberta government announced Wednesday it has given a $500,000 grant to the Grande Prairie Youth Emergency Shelter Society from the Community Facility Enhancement Program.

Sunrise House Executive Director Tanya Wald says the organization will soon launch a capital campaign.

“So, we’ll be going to (the) community and different funders and corporations for the remainder and then potentially borrow if we have to but we’re very hopeful that we will be able to raise the remaining funds,” Wald explained.

Wald says the lifting of COVID restrictions should make fundraising for the new shelter a lot easier.

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“It opens up the door for our Big Hearts for Big Kids event that we’ll have coming up.”

“With the capital campaign, we had original plans in place to do some community events that really focused on awareness of the shelter and being able to really showcase where we were going and what the building was going to look like. With the restrictions, we were really unsure how we were going to do that in a really meaningful way,” she added.

Wald mentioned they can now plan some sort of event related to their capital campaign.

She adds the final design for the new building is almost complete.

“We’ve been working on the design for a while, but this was (Before) knowing exactly what our land was going to be. We were able to go back to do any last bits of revision.”

“We’ll actually be releasing that design with our capital campaign so the community will get a chance to see what exactly what we have planned and what is in store for our young people,” Wald said.

The new shelter is planned for land in the Gateway area near Margaret Edgson Manor.

The plan is to start construction this year and finish by the fall of 2023. The total cost is estimated at $5.5 million.