BGC Sarnia-Lambton is receiving a $25,000 tech grant from Best Buy Canada to improve opportunities for youth who use its programs.
The grant is one of four that Best Buy Canada has awarded BGC clubs across the country in celebration of 25 years of partnership between the two.
"The children and youth that utilize our programs- our whole kind of motto is that there are no barriers to service, and I think this opens up opportunities that they might not otherwise have. And being able to get in some really unique technology to upgrade our programs. I think it will be really exciting for them, and something that they might not be able to do otherwise if we didn't offer that programming for free," said BGC Sarnia-Lambton Executive Director Jaylene Henry.
Through technology grants, Best Buy Canada has helped BGC Clubs across the country create spaces where kids can explore coding, robotics, digital media, graphic design, music production, and photography.
"Kids are just excited to learn. When I look at the programming that we do in our STEAM Ahead program, it's them getting to see the different sides behind science and different engineering things, and just things that are not in my wheelhouse personally. But it's really cool to have people come in and teach some of those things and get to see the kids be able to learn in areas that aren't taught every day that are really special to them and then they get to see their creation or their science experiment or their art piece or whatever it is kind of come to life and we test those theories out in the same night," she said.
Henry said the team at BGC Sarnia-Lambton is looking at what they can add to their programming with the funds from this grant and what will benefit the youth the most.
"We're still in communication with our leadership team to see where we can best adapt and grow our programs, but we run a program called STEAM Ahead. It stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math, and we run that for free through the school year on Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30, and we partner with Imperial Oil for that program as well. But we haven't done a technology upgrade to that program in quite some time, so we're just doing a little bit of internal research and gathering our supplies that we'll need to upgrade that program. So that's where we're going to start."
The partnership between Best Buy and BGC Canada has made it so many young people are able to have access to programs and opportunities that would otherwise not be possible, such as scholarships, tech grants and events.
