The Western Rocky View Parent Link Centre is throwing a big party to celebrate nearly a decade in the community, and is inviting Cochrane to join them in the festivities.
The event will take place Feb. 17 at the Parent Link Centre, which is celebrating nine years in Cochrane, and 10 years of the program as a whole in Alberta.
The Parent Link Centre is a provincial initiative started by the Province of Alberta and is designed to help families with children from birth to six years of age play, develop and learn.
The Cochrane centre operates in partnership with Alberta Human Services, Calgary & Area Child & Family Services Authority and Cochrane Family and Community Support Services (FCSS).
“It is just continually evolving and changing. In nine years from now, we will probably look completely different again. It has been a really neat process,” said Kim Krawec, coordinator at the Parent Link Centre, who has been at the centre for all nine years.
The event will run from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and will include entertainer Mary Lambert taking the stage at 10 a.m., family activities, a photo booth for pictures and for people to record messages about what the centre has meant to them. There will also be a PowerPoint presentation that will look back over the last nine years at the centre.
The event will also be celebrating the second birthday of Cinnamon Bear, the FCSS mascot.
Krawec said it has been amazing to see the centre grow over the years, having it start out in a tiny two room space and now expanding to operate programs six days a week in a much larger facility.
The centre currently offers a number of ‘developmental play programs, parent education workshops, developmental screening, resource library and Triple P Parenting.’
Each year, Krawec said they do an annual survey and take a look at the feedback to see how they can ‘best meet the needs of the community’, a community that is growing very quickly.
“We grow and change and develop and meet the needs, because it is always changing. Just when we think we have it perfected, something new comes up and we have to add additional resources to support the changing community,” she said.
Part of the reason Krawec said the centre has been so successful for nine years has been the partnerships they have developed with different agencies in the community, such as Cochrane Mental Health and the Nan Booth Memorial Library.
For more information on the event or on the Parent Link Centre call 403-851-2265.
