Schafercouncil 2015

A beef on a bun barbeque will be taking place before the big show at the Cody Snyder PBR Invitational tonight, with proceeds being donated for youth advocacy initiatives.

The City has been working with former Swift Current Bronco and child abuse advocate, Sheldon Kennedy, in finding help and resources for those affected by childhood abuse following the recent events surrounding the Ryan Chamberlin case after he was handed a five year sentence for his crimes of sexually assaulting minors under the guise of a private sports coach.

"We actually just had a city planning session in terms of some of the initiatives that we're looking at in our community to create additional layers of safety," said Swift Current Mayor Jerrod Schafer. "We walked through some of the models that we're looking at implementing in terms of what we can do within the city itself as being a leader in the community and a major employer and also some of the initiatives, but our next steps are going to be reaching out to some of our partner user groups, like minor sports organizations, some service providers in our community, and work to get some buy-in and some feedback from them."

There has been talk in Swift Current of introducing an advocacy centre, similar to that of Sheldon Kennedy's Youth Advocacy Centre in Calgary, to become part of the new integrated facility, but Schafer says while there is potential, there is still quite a bit of work left to do before that happens.

"There is a group of partners including the City and the Cypress Health Region who have been exploring working with the Advocacy Centre in Calgary, but again as I said that's in the very early stages. We don't even have an integrated facility yet, so it's still something that we need to coordinate with not only ourselves but other levels of government as well as other municipal partners, so there's lots of leg work to do there. We'd love to see it happen quicker, but the reality of it is there's lots of partnerships to be achieved in order to do it right," explained Schafer. "We would like to see some initiatives take place, though, in terms of things like the youth certification that we've been talking about, tightening things up in some of the facilities that we rent out and some of our own internal policies with the City of Swift Current, and we would hope to see that progress achieved by the fall for sure."

"I think it's great that there's groups in the organization that are starting to buy in and get excited about this concept in our community and supporting it, and I'm assuming we'd see that grow over time," he added. "I think for now it's just if there's organizations that are interested in learning more about the initiative and lending their support to it, that's great to see. Elevating the conversation is really what this is all about and getting people comfortable with standing up for kids and talking about abuse. We appreciate the Broncos taking that initiative, and we look forward to more of that happening."

The beef on a bun barbeque will take place at the Credit Union I-Plex from 2pm to 6pm, with the main event starting at 7pm.