Friday, June 9th, 2023 was an exceptional day for Rotary and The Grove Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario - Wellington Guelph. The Rotary Club of Guelph's Charitable Foundation, the RGC Fund, donated $288,000 towards the building fund of the newest Hub under construction on Woolwich Street, due to open in Fall 2023. 
 
 
More to the point, the presentations demonstrated 
THE POWER OF ROTARY IN ACTION!
 
 
Introduction
by Terrie Jarvis
 
In 2018, there was magic in the air or in the water here at our Rotary Club of Guelph.
 
In that year, and in our own meeting room at the ICC, TWO significant Rotary-inspired programs were launched. One was Food4Kids Guelph, and a few months later, an ambitious initiative called Integrated Youth Services Network or IYSN as it was known until it was rebranded in mid-2021 as THE GROVE Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario – Wellington Guelph.
 
Today, we are here to celebrate and support THE GROVE HUBS as we anticipate the opening in Fall 2023 of the newest and largest Grove site that will be at  737 Woolwich Street North (near Riverside Park) within the region’s new CMHA building to house the Centre of Children Mental Health and Development Services.
 
For over two decades, members of this club had seen the need for some type of local Youth Centre. Various inquiries and initiatives had not gone anywhere until August 2018, when our club's past president, Marty Fairbairn, invited Dr. Joanna Henderson to our club as a guest speaker. Dr Henderson introduced us to her concept of Integrated Youth Services through Youth Wellness Hubs. She lit a spark amongst our members that quickly became a burning ambition. Within weeks, our club hosted a huge, one-day workshop to determine if local Guelph and Wellington service providers were willing to explore ways of improving their accessibility to young people.
 
Rotary’s important role was to act a neutral, third party facilitator … and it worked.  Rotary’s trusted reputation brought more and more providers on board, led by our own Cyndy Dearden and Paul Dredge, who both invested countless hours in the mission.
 
Today’s celebration of The Grove Hubs also celebrates THE POWER OF ROTARY IN ACTION, and we are so proud to have been a part of building this new and wonderful asset in the Wellington Guelph community.
 
Now we’ll hear from some of the key players themselves:  Paul Dredge, Jeff Hoffman, Allison Chevrier, Cyndy Dearden and Marty Fairbairn.
 
Our Club's Previous Attempt at a Youth Centre
by Past President Paul Dredge (2018-2019)
 
President Andrew, Featured Guests, Cyndy Dearden, Jeff Hoffman, Allison Chevrier, Fellow Rotarians and Guests that today include my lovely wife Anita, who has spent too much of the last year as my personal nurse! But that's another story ...
 
As we bring you up to date on the amazing success story that is The Grove, and given the number of new or relatively new Rotarians in our club, we want you to know why and how our club has been instrumental in the creation and scope that The Grove has become.
 
I joined the club in 1996 and there was already a passionate group of club members determined to address the grave need for a Youth Centre in Guelph. In 1998, I was asked to join this illustrious group. 
 
The work that had already been done by Rotarians was awe-inspiring. It included extensive youth engagement to hear directly from youth what they dreamt of seeing in a Youth Centre. Our team continued researching and creating a business plan and financial estimates. We felt it necessary to include the City of Guelph as a partner as we needed them to help locate a site and secure the zoning and necessary permits.
 
Sadly, involving the City turned out to a fatal flaw in our process. 
 
At that time, our club was about 185 members strong. It included CEOs of successful businesses, lawyers, doctors, etc. - oh, and a realtor or two. [Paul himself was a realtor in the day.]  The Rotarians had invested a great deal of work and time taking this concept to the brink, only to have the City take the project over and basically shut Rotary out. Understandably, the group was very disappointed and, safe to say, angered that at the eleventh hour, all our work was dismissed and our vision was reduced to a request for financial support. 
 
Based on our research and direct meetings with the city youth, it was clear to us that the Centre needed to be easily accessible to youth and spacious enough to offer a variety of services and activities on site. Unfortunately, we were not made part of the decision team that picked the ultimate location of the long-awaited site. The City later invited us to walk through their chosen site that ended up being in a basement of the former Children's Aid building on Delhi Street. Don Bower, Bill Winegard and myself went to inspect the site. It was a surprisingly tight space with tired, second-hand furniture, and it was set up like a Rec Room. It was very dark even on a bright spring day! We spoke to a few youth and most were disappointed - they had expected something more spacious and much brighter.
 
Our Rotary Club decided to express our deep disappointment and not continue supporting the project. Don Bower and I went to a meeting of a newly created City Committee overseeing the Youth Centre. We were thanked for visiting the site but were not afforded any opportunity to express our thoughts on what we'd seen.
 
That was the end for our club's Youth Centre sub-committee. We tendered our resignations from the City Committee, and from any Rotary Club of Guelph involvement going forward with this project. 
 
That was in the early stages of the new millennium and the chosen site didn't last much longer after Rotary's resignation from the project. It was not popular with youth either. 
 
There was understandably much bitterness over having our painstaking due diligence and time and effort spent only to be ripped away from us and our recommendations ignored.
 
It wasn't until Dr. Joanna Henderson spoke to our club in the summer of 2018 in a highly motivating presentation that the passion for a Youth Centre stirred once again. Paul Truex invited a few of us to a breakfast meeting to discuss the possibility of taking another run at creating a still badly needed centre for youth. Dr. Henderson sent us an 80-page guide which although daunting left us with the idea that Guelph not only needed it, but following the steps outlined by Dr. Henderson, we could actually do it.
 
It would take much work, time, community and youth services buy-in, and some serious capital fundraising - but it could be done.
 
We added one major step that was not actually listed by Joanna. It was to add a new club member named Cyndy Dearden to the project and let her run!
 
And the rest is history.
 
Finally, let me say this. On the backs of the men and women who worked so tirelessly in the mid to late 1990s towards the goal of a Youth Centre, all was not lost. It was just delayed.
 
When I presented a request for major funding to the Rotary Club of Guelph Charitable Foundation, better known as the RGC Fund, there were enough members who were well aware of how close we had come in the 90s, and that this time, the way that IYSN (now The Grove) was developed and organized, the City was not in any position to take this one away from us.
 
Despite the financial limitations imposed by Covid, the Foundation is generously supporting The Grove with $288,000 towards the new site under construction on Woolwich Street North.
 
Thank you so very much to the Rotary Club of Guelph Charitable Foundation whose members are all past presidents of this club. Who better to provide the link to all those who worked so hard and tirelessly toward the very goal we are now recognizing.
 
The Rotary Club of Guelph's DNA is all over The Grove.
 
To the Children & Youth Committee of our club, and the many individual Rotarians, thanks for your support. Every bit of help has been needed and has led to where we are and will go.
 
On that note - let's find out where we are ....
 
The Grove Hubs Today
by Jeff Hoffman
 
Jeff is the Interim Executive Director of The Grove Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario - Wellington Guelph. He has worked alongside Cyndy Dearden since mid 2021, initially focused on Fund Development but now responsible for overall management as well. He briefly described the almost seven sites that now make up The Grove Hubs, and invites readers to learn more here:
Impact on Youth - A personal story
by Allison Chevrier
 
Allison is today employed as a Youth Ambassador for The Grove and told her personal, engaging story about how she wishes she'd had access to a place like The Grove when she grew up. It was heartwarming to hear!
 
Expanding on our success story
by Cyndy Dearden 
 
Cyndy played a 5-minute video made especially for today to explain the start up of The Grove. Watch it here: 
 
Cyndy expressed her enormous gratitude to Rotary and reiterated her belief that The Grove Hubs would probably not have come about without Rotary's initial support.
 
She explained a new, special assignment that she has recently accepted for the next year, namely to act as a consultant for Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario to help and guide other communities wanting to set up their own Youth Wellness Centres, based on the experience of The Grove Wellington Guelph. How amazing is that!
 
The donation from Rotary's RGC Fund
by Marty Fairbairn
 
The cheque fro $288,000 was given, and how fitting that it was presented by the current Chair of the RGC Fund, past president Marty Fairbairn, the person who invited Dr. Joanna Henderson to speak at our club back in 2018 that started this amazing story.
 
 
L-R: Jeff Hoffman, Interim ED of The Grove Hubs; President Andrew Johnson of the Rotary Club of Guelph (2022-2023); Yumna Farooq, a Youth Ambassador for The Grove; past president Marty Fairbairn and current chair of the RGC Fund; past president Paul Dredge and member of the RGC Fund; Rotarian Cyndy Dearden, the driving force behind The Grove Hubs and now consultant to help other communities emulate The Grove Wellington Guelph.