11 Apr Charities and Volunteers Return to cGaming Centres
The OCGA is very excited to announce that on April 4th charities and their volunteers will be returning to the 37 cGaming centres to carry out their roles and responsibilities. Other than a brief period last fall, volunteers have not been in the gaming centres to support customers and centre staff for over two years. We are receiving very positive feedback and hearing lots of excitement about the imminent return. Volunteers have really missed being in the gaming centres and the gaming centre staff have missed their support.
For April, a minimum of one volunteer is required with some flexibility on the roles. Starting in May, we’re back to normal with two volunteers carrying out full roles and responsibilities.
We’re coming back stronger than ever! Volunteers are currently being trained or retrained using our new online provincial training module. The reason for this is to move towards greater consistency with the volunteer roles and responsibilities in all gaming centres. Across the province since early March, over 7,000 volunteers have taken the training, with more coming online every day to prepare for their return.
In advance, we greatly appreciate everyone’s patience and hands-on support as our volunteers ‘learn to ride the bike’ again over the next several weeks. We are pleased to see many of our experienced volunteers returning but, with the challenges of the pandemic, many groups are also recruiting new individuals to assist them. The pandemic has hit the volunteer sector very hard.
On behalf of all of our over 2,100 charities, OCGA would like to recognize the unprecedented efforts of gaming centre operators, their management, and their staff over these past two years. While the charities were unable to provide support, during this time, operators pushed through all of the challenges and continued to provide revenues for the organizations. These funds were desperately needed as groups grappled with increased needs, loss of other fundraising opportunities, and changes to the delivery of programs and services. Without the limited funds from the gaming centres, many more organizations would have cancelled community programs or closed permanently. A sincere thank you to our commercial operator partners for helping our charities and communities in such difficult times.
As we move forward and our industry evolves, OCGA and our member charities will continue to support the gaming centres and our valuable customers. Through our efforts and with our Charitable Promotional Fund, we will showcase the valuable local charity contributions and the impact of charitable gaming on our communities. The economic and social benefits from cGaming are immense and distinguish our industry from the other gaming sectors. We look forward to a bright future where, as the industry grows, more charities and non-profits may benefit.
Again, a huge thank-you to everyone in the industry for their ongoing support of charities.
From the OCGA Team
Charitable Gaming Supporting the Community
Kingston 4 Paws Service Dogs
Funds raised by Kingston 4 Paws Service Dogs (K4Paws) at Community Spirit Gaming Centre are used for the acquisition of puppies and the associated veterinary care needed. K4Paws has service dogs for autism, mobility and PTSD support and seizure response dogs. Service dog recipients do not pay out of pocket for their dogs but help with fundraising to acquire, care for, and train the animal. The cost is $20,000 to $25,000 per dog. K4Paws does not receives any government funding so cGaming funds are invaluable to supporting the community.