Crystal Kids

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In order to mitigate these risks, Crystal Kids provides nutritional support, literacy and life skills coaching as well as athletic and artistic programming. We are keenly aware that the diversion work that we do has kept families together and functioning, supported children through times when their families were not able to provide food, clothing and shelter security, supervised children when their parents were not able to do so, and specifically were unable to parent in a healthy manner. We diverted children from choosing gangs and prostitution or other high-risk lifestyles. As a result of our activities, many children remain in families which could not function without the aid and support of Crystal Kids. "Crystal Kids is an integrated community support centre focused on building resilience, providing opportunities, and encouraging life-long learning through its partnerships and programs.

We provide new social learning experiences, modeling appropriate behaviour and etiquette for youth who have not had the advantage of an upbringing inclusive of these values.

Since that time, Crystal Kids' mission has expanded far beyond promoting health and physical fitness for inner city youth.We foster youth self-esteem and help ensure their mental and emotional wellbeing. Through Crystal Kids, youth and their families can access invaluable resources and support networks to help maintain dignity and balance in their lives. We also reach out to those who suffer from isolation, including seniors and recent immigrant families, providing them with healthy communication and positive social interaction. Overall, we're a safe, supporting and friendly environment for anyone who needs us. We provide nurturing, support and supervision to inner-city children many of whom experience neglect and a lack of healthy relationships and role modelling. The model is an outcome based service for mentoring youth and combines strength-based principles with a harm-reduction model and a focus on relationships and capacity building. The approaches are unique and personalized to each child and cultivate resiliency and bolsters the competencies of the child(ren).

Crystal Kids was founded in 1992 with an original mandate for sports opportunities for disadvantaged youth. There is ample evidence that sports programs produce healthy outcomes for some inner-city youth. But the fact is that Sports alone just doesn’t get the job done. Hungry kids can’t play sports. Broken families struggle to or simply can't support their children at school or provide proper supervision and positive modeling. Today our core programs of Sports, Nutrition, Creative Arts and Literacy try to fill the gap. We hope the introduction of our newest program “Heroes” will help when the need is intense. Crystal Kids’ staff are positive role models, whom facilitate good social learning and healthy life choices. A study showed that in Ontario the number of abused or neglected children doubled between 1993 and 1998 and doubled again between 1998 and 2003. Our experience at Crystal Kids and information shared with staff by Children’s Services, is that these same figures are reflected in inner-city Edmonton. In Alberta, Children’s Services and Education are under great economic pressure.

Our Literacy and Educational Support Program requires a minimum of 15 – 20 minutes of supervised reading, journal writing or homework from each child, at the beginning of each centre visit. We provide companion readers for kids who are struggling, reading coaches for those who are in dire need, and tutors for kids in grades K-12 needing extra help with school work. We know that any child who does not attain literacy and number skills of at least a grade six level is unlikely to ever attain full-time employment. We also know that any child who completes a high school diploma doubles the likelihood of their ability to attain life-long employment. We provided over 4880 hours of mentored literacy and homework activities in 2012.

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