Kevin Gangloff – Orillia Youth Centre

Why does Orillia need a youth centre?

You can sort of look at it as servicing young people in opportunities.

Youth centres mean something different to every community. What we’ve been fortunate to see as a youth centre and our growth over the course of time of offering opportunities, is we’ve been able to create a space where youth of all walks of life can come through our doors and take part. One thing that we overlook a lot of times is that youth always need to be youth.

Youth are faced with a myriad of issues and they always have been. I mean that’s not different, you know today, 10 years ago, 100 years ago, we’re all faced with different challenges, different issues. But, we’re tasking youth with growing up so quickly, so to create a space where youth can come and just be youth and take part in what I call “fun youth things”. We have that space, we’re open seven days a week and seeing youth of all walks of life.

Sometimes a youth that’s coming seven days a week might have different needs than someone that just wants to come and grab a guitar off the wall and play open mic night. But we can service all those youth and everything we offer is free of charge, so again it just allows everyone to come in and be a young person. It allows them to feel safe, feel like they belong and you know who doesn’t want to feel like you belong somewhere?

As a community, to have that space where youth can come and feel they belong it’s a win. We’ve heard nothing but positive pieces from youth over the course of time.