REGINA - Many people felt the ramifications when Peavey Mart announced last week that they would be closing all of their stores across the country.
One organization in particular that was affected by the closure is the Al Ritchie Community Association (ARCA).
Denis Simard, executive director of ARCA, explained that their group’s funding is dependent on outside sources. ARCA does get funding from the City of Regina and other places, but it's not enough to cover all their costs. So, ARCA will write grants to various places, which include Peavey Mart.
ARCA had tried getting a grant from Peavey Mart over the past few years with no luck. However, in 2024, ARCA got a response from Peavey Mart in the fall regarding the grant.
After numerous phone calls, Peavey Mart wanted to do a Zoom meeting with ARCA. Simard remembers seeing "[a] huge table of people sitting in there, and we find out that one of them is the CEO of Peavey Mart."
The meeting was a formality by the hardware store, who informed Simard that ARCA was one of the 10 projects across Canada to receive a grant of $10,000.
Peavey Mart informed Simard he should receive the money in Nov. However, that never came to be. Simard kept being told by the hardware store that they were having trouble sending out the money, and the date ARCA was supposed to receive the grant kept getting pushed back.
When asked if that concerned Simard at the time, he said, "yeah." He added, "anytime there's any delay or anything [like that], there's always kind of a red flag that goes up, and you're trying to figure out why."
After months of waiting, In Jan., Simard got an email from a Peavey Mart employee, who told him they lost their job and that ARCA shouldn’t be counting on receiving the grant.
Simard’s initial reaction to all of this was, "first off, we feel super bad for all these individuals who have lost their jobs, right? So [we're] super sad about that." He added, "[it was also] sad about what that meant for us because we've been struggling financially and knowing that we weren't gonna count on that $10,000 anymore was problematic."
The money ARCA was supposed to receive from Peavey Mart would have served two functions. The first is their community garden project. As Simard explained, "we've had these gardens for many, many years, but the quality and the nutrients of the soil have gone down. Basically, you can only kind of pull stuff out of that soil for so long before you need to put something back into it to kind of get it back into a healthy nutrient level. And that hasn't happened for many years. A large portion of that was really to [go get manure and other supplies to replenish the soil]."
As for the other function, the rest of the funding would have gone towards ARCA’s food nutrition programs and food security programs. "We have [children from the ages of] zero to six [in] sort of our toddler programs that are learning about healthy food habits. [Also, we have] our teen programs, which are learning about how to cook and sort of have healthy snacks for them,” said Simard.
One thing Simard pointed out in terms of receiving grants from funders is how the process is taking longer due to a higher volume of applications. While Simard cannot confirm how many applications they used to receive, the process would be around two months typically. Now, that timeframe has tripled, and it's taking about six months to go through, said Simard.
ARCA’s need for funding has ramped up over the past few years because of the growing needs of the people in the community.
Simard said, "over the course of the last four years, we went from, like feeding and clothing, 50 families a month to now 3000 to 4000 families a month."
He also added around 5 to 10 per cent of the clients ARCA serves are currently living on the streets. The way ARCA identifies if someone is homeless is "they [the clients] provide us [ARCA with] their postal code, so if they have a postal code, that's great, but if they don't, they tell us, and then we just basically know that. [So], we mark that person as homeless, and we go from there, and that's how we kind of track those numbers."
The numbers ARCA has collected suggest the amount of people that are living on the streets is trending upwards over the past few years.
Since ARCA has had to serve more people, their budget has been tight since last August, said Simard. This has forced Simard to lay off some staff at one point and shut down certain programs.
Hoping to receive help from the community, ARCA posted to their social media last week talking about how they lost out on the grant and that they would be willing to talk to anyone who's interested in supporting their upcoming projects.
After ARCA posted on their social media, Simard said the reaction has "been pretty amazing."
He added, "there's been a ton of that [support], which is great. We've also had, you know, groups come up and just say. Hey, we can't do cash, but we can do food. We can do clothing. We can volunteer our time. We can do [that],' and so that's been amazing to create those new connections, and the truth is, we're really lucky [that] we've got some local businesses that are talking to us about, you know, seeing if they can help us financially."
Simard was also asked if people could bring in specific items that are currently in need. He mentioned baby supplies are something ARCA doesn’t get often. But most people they serve are in need of it. He also noted any type of clothing but underwear and socks are acceptable.
