The Fanos Light Afterschool Program was designed and launched in 2021 in Winnipeg, Canada, with the purpose of supporting children’s and youth education by providing a safe space, resources, tools, and the proper support that these children need in their academic life pursuits. This program was launched after a careful assessment of the needs of students in our community, particularly for newcomers, new immigrants, and low-income families. We learned there is a huge need in the area of having access to proper support for programs like tutoring, improving language proficiency, and communication skills—particularly for newcomer and new immigrant children and youth. There is also a need for a proper support system that considers their needs, culture, interests, and demographics, as well as access to educational aid materials, tools, and other resources to help them thrive in their studies and life pursuits.
Therefore, we designed specific programs and services that consider the needs of these children, youth, and their parents in the community. We started the program by accepting students between the ages of 5 and 15 who were able to come to our rented facility at the time. We ran the program during the 2021/22 school year with the support of amazing volunteers who came to assist these children and Fanos Light as an organization. We started the program using our own resources, time, money, and experiences to support some of these children and youth—of course, with the help of our volunteers who gave their time, resources, knowledge, and experience.
When we looked back to reflect , It has been quite a journey, and we have come a long way in developing and improving this program. There is so much we have learn as individuals and as organziations in the past few years ,a nd we are gretaful to all the people and organziations who supported our work and our progarms. We particularly want to thank the Winnipeg Foundation for their support by providing funding for our after-school program for the past few years.
As an organization, we have many needs: the need to improve our organizational structure, the need to build our human resource capacity, and the need to secure a convenient space where we can provide our programs and services to children and youth in our community. Therefore, we have been working on these areas while continuously striving to develop and improve programs and services that meaningfully support the children and youth who attend. We are grateful for all the progress we have made in this endeavor, but we believe there is still more to do and that there is always room for improvement and growth. I want to take this opportunity again to thank and appreciate all the individuals working at Fanos Light, as well as all of our board members and volunteers who support our work.
This year’s program was launched earlier with a few children and youth, and we are working to expand it by accepting more participants and enhancing our programs and services to accommodate the needs of these children, youth, and their families. We are grateful for what we have been able to accomplish thus far, and we are ready and looking forward to continuing our work to develop and improve our programs and services to support all children, youth, and families.
