A year and a half ago the Boys and Girls Club South East began looking at an expansion of its Bath Road location to coincide with the redevelopment of the Frontenac Mall.
Plans for the expansion came together and the club added 9,200 square feet.
But what to put there?
“We are looking to re-locate the Kingston Robotics lab as well as expanding to STEM, innovation, entrepreneurship,” said Scott Compeau, Director of Education and Innovation at the Boys and Girls Club South East.
The Boys and Girls club completed the acquisition of the Kingston Robotics Lab on Railway Street last fall and will be moving the facility to its Bath Road location.
To help the project along, the club received funding from both the provincial and federal governments, adding accessibility improvements with a $70,000 grant from the federal government and further renovations with $150,000 from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
“It’s great to see that they’re using this opportunity to do that. The more accessible we can make these locations, the more inclusive they become and the more they become accessible to all citizens,” said Kingston and the Islands MPP Mark Gerretsen.
“Services. After-school services, helping kids have the opportunity to look into things like science and technology or maybe it’s fitness or maybe it’s developing other skills,” added Kingston and the Islands MPP Ted Hsu.
For Hsu, who has a background in physics and has been involved in the Kingston competitive robotics scene, it hits home.
“The robotics effort in Kingston, a lot of people have worked on it over the years. My own kids were involved in robotics and we helped set up this Kingston Robotics Laboratory that the Boys and Girls Club is taking over,” he added.
Not only will this open a path to robotics for kids across Kingston who might not have otherwise had the chance, but Compeau said that the programming this will allow will help let kids explore other areas of science, technology, engineering and math as well.
“The change to the curriculum as well around something like engineering and engineering design has really brought the focus on STEM and what that might mean for our children and youth in thinking about the future,” said Compeau.
Compeau said they still need to get funding for further renovations to prepare it to be a functioning robotics workshop, but the plan is to have it ready and offering programming by this September.