Big Brothers and Big Sisters finally gets to celebrate expansion

By Justin Seward - Lethbridge Herald on April 22, 2022.

Herald photo by Justin Seward Board member George Kuhl cuts the ribbon, alongside Beth Songer, Reuban Quinteros, Charleen Davidson, Greg Flom and Jen VIssser, as part of Big Brothers and Big Sisters' expansion and open house event.

The Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Lethbridge and District held its open house and ribbon cutting ceremony Thursday to celebrate their expansion that was initially completed in 2020.
The expansion added on over 1,000 square feet over two storeys to the organization’s location along 6 Avenue South.
“Today, we’re finally able to have our open house to showcase the massive expansion that we’ve completed, which allows us to have more open space for our programs, for our kids and for our community,” said Jen Visser, Big Brothers and Big Sisters executive director.
The organization was outgrowing its space and the expansion was made possible because of a grant from the Downtown Rotary Club in the amount of $100,000, as well as assistance from the Home Depot, Community Foundations, City of Lethbridge, Songer Architecture and Deluxe Granite to name a few.
“What it was is we’re outgrowing the space and we’ve been in this building since 1989- I think everybody knows the Big Brothers house,” said Visser.
“And what we thought was we’ll either we need to find a new space, we need to either expand the building or maybe open up a satellite office. And so as a board and as a staff, we underwent this whole project to know what we want to do. We decided to expand and then we did that and right when we finished, COVID hit.”
This was the third time the organization tried to host an open house and this time were able to invite everybody that was a part of the project and also to provide an update on what Big Brothers and Big Sisters is currently doing in the community.
“There are so many kids who need a mentor,” she said.
“We’ve been able to serve as many kids in the first quarter of 2022 than we did all of last year.”

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