Ghanaian Canadian Community center- Letter from the President

On October 2007, GCAO executives, acting on the advice of the council entered into an agreement to lease 8 Ashwarren Road to serve as Ghanaian community Centre. This was based on the promise that individual associations will contribute money towards the project. 8 Ashwarren was chosen after inspecting several other premises within North York, Etobicoke and York, after showing the place to representatives from some of the contributing associations. It was agreed that for a starter the place was satisfactory. Based on that consensus GCAO signed a lease agreement for three years with an option to renew it for 2 or more additional years. We did recognize at the time that the place needed renovations to bring it up to an appropriate standard and felt that the renovations could be done within a month. This estimation was based on the premise that member associations will send in their contributions on time.

We did manage to do some of the renovations and started using the place since June 2008. We however would like to inform the community that, we are at a critical juncture financially at this point and have little or no alternative but to terminate the project if there is no bail out from the community.

Please note below a brief outline why such an eventuality has become necessary.

Our original plan to complete the renovations within a month so that the place could be rented to generate income before the bills came in did not happen. The main reason for that was the delay in receiving the necessary funds for the renovations. Some community members and associations sent their contributions on time which gave us the encouragement to go ahead, while others who initially signaled their interest to join the project did not do so. That is, we were unable to secure the initial projected requirement of $50-$70 thousand which would have completed the project within a month. Thus the delay in receiving the funds resulted in using whatever came in late to pay rent and bills instead of preparing the place for rental. This cash flow problem did stretch the renovations over several months instead of the initial projected one month and put a lot of strain on the association’s finances, even eating into the executive’s personal resources as well.

The second cause is the patronage of the place by the community. Though the renovations could not be completed, the place could still be used for meetings, funerals and other community programs. We were therefore counting on the community, especially member association to rent the place so that we could at least pay some of the bills before running programs that could qualify for government funding. That effort also has been disappointing. Again we tried to organize fundraising to support the Centre, the latest being the one on August 23, 2008. Attendance that day, even from our members was abysmally poor and as such we could not raise enough money to pay the bills.

The third is the rental revenues coming in. In order to be competitive and to encourage people to rent the place, we reduced our price to $1,200, hoping that the place would be booked for all Saturdays which would have helped us to breakeven. Unfortunately, it did not happen as planned and we have to borrow money to pay the bills at the end of every month since February 2008 in an effort to save the project.

We have met several times with our contributing partners on this issue since May this year as well as GCAO Board of Advisors and they have all been doing their best to help with the situation. We are soon entering the lean winter season with few bookings in our books from now till December and there is no indication additional bookings would be forthcoming. That means we would not be able to pay the bills during the winter season. This is certainly an unfortunate development. However as you can probably see, there’s not a lot one can do about the situation at this point.

Achieving unity in our community has always been GCAO’s major focus and the purpose of the project was to achieve that aim. It was to establish a common Centre, however modest which we could all belong to irrespective of religious affiliation or ethnic background, a symbol of community unity and a place where we can run common programs for both adults and the youth. Our aim was to encourage associations and individuals to provide funding and work together as a team to run the Centre. The more the partner associations, the easier it would have been to run it and by sharing a common object, we could find it easier to work together on any other issue concerning our community. This has been the aim for the Community Centre project, another attempt after decades of trying to get our own place. It is unfortunate it did not work out that way.

We thank you for the trust and support you placed in us and regret this outcome of our combined efforts.

Francis Ahinful, PRESIDENT GCAO