Our year IN REVIEW Our year IN REVIEW

from 2022 BGC Annual Report

summer slidesummer slide

amy shanks Executive Director

2022 was another banner year for BGC Greater Saint John as we continue to grow in numbers of children and youth we serve, and expand our geographic footprint.

This year we added a new community to our roaster of locations, Sussex. We held 6 weeks of free educational summer day camps that 42 children from the area were able to attend. It’s always nice to hear comments from parents like this one, “My son really didn’t want to go - he’s really shy. But right from the first day, every day he came home bursting with stories about how much fun he had! I think his favourite things

2022 was the first year since the pandemic that National held a Conference. Melissa Leighton, Board Treasurer, and 3 staff members, Jill Farrar, Amanda Walsh, and myself, made the trip to Saskatchewan for the conference. At the conference we were introduced to a mental health program being offered at another club. Knowing how prevalent mental health issues are, when we returned from conference, Jill and Amanda used that model to develop our own mental health program. This new program is a partnership between BGC and Port City Counselling. Any Club member can access free services from one of their counsellors. We also extended this program to our staff. To date 32 clients have accessed the services.

Along with new programs comes additional funding and increased staff. Our revenue for 2022 increased by approximately 25% over the previous year. One of the largest jumps in revenues we’ve seen year over year. Additional staffing needs meant we needed to invest in a full-time HR Administrator who assists with recruiting hiring screening onboarding

Our Christmas Families program continues to grow. We helped supply Christmas to 30 families which included 71 children and 52 adults. We have been investing in our capacity building every year. In 2022 we invested in a new program that would track donations, grants, staff, donors, and program registrations. This program enables our team to search for statistics and other information quicker and easier, making reporting more efficient and faster. The end of the year is always a time I look back and reflect on where we’ve been, how far we’ve come, and where we will go in the future. We will continue to look for and create programs to further BGC’s vision that all children and youth discover and achieve their dreams and grow up to be healthy, successful and active participants in society.