A busy annual general meeting for the Southwest Youth Emergency Shelter (SwYES) last week.

The AGM held on June 12th featured three significant developments for the immediate future.

One of the developments stemming from the meeting was the election of Charmaine Westbury as one of the new Directors of the SwYES, filling the vacant position left by Lenni Zanidean.

Westbury has been involved with the development of Dorie's House since April of 2016 when she and her brother (Tom Westbury) of Len's Plumbing and Heating came forward as lead contractors for the project. She felt that leaving behind such a heavy role was hard to walk away from after construction of Dorie's House was completed.

"The house itself is extremely important to my family, my brother and I," Charmaine Westbury said. "We can't really have a say if we don't get involved, so we (Charmaine & Tom) discussed it and rock, paper, scissored to see which one of us would take on that responsibility."

The newest director of SwYES says the decision was easy to join the vacancy in honour of the youth shelter's namesake, Dorie Westbury, her mother.

"We (my brother and I) wanted to see it succeed and to make sure it's successful and it stayed there forever in a legacy of our mom," she added. "In order for that to happen, we need to be involved."

The generosity of the southwest shone through on the SwYES, as they received $331,910.04 in donations. The non-profit organization also recorded a surplus of $241,406 which was used to fund the building of Dorie's House for the balance remaining that wasn't donated.

The final significant development that arose from the meeting was the board has determined that the Executive Director position will be replaced with a House Manager.