Organizers tried to present the day as a celebration, but the tears and impassioned speeches were more akin to a funeral.
On Friday, the Future Cents Program died.
For the past 16 years Future Cents has grouped at-risk young people together for a semester of skills training, life development, job readiness lessons and practical experience. Hundreds have graduated from the program. Some have gone on to work for Future Cents. Many of them were in the room for a luncheon on Friday afternoon as the "open" sign was turned over to read "closed" forevermore.
Also in the room were dozens of social workers, healthcare professionals, and government staff - all of whom have experienced in some way the transformative work done by the Future Cents staff and menu of services.
"I work for a bureaucracy. This program also worked inside that bureaucracy, and changed all these lives despite it, not because of it. And in the end, that bureaucracy killed it," said one of the workers who has partnered with Future Cents over the years. "A funding decision was made by people who have never set foot in this room."
"Instead of paying for this program, the government has chosen to pay instead for higher costs in policing and hospitals and courts. This decision means instead of learning skills to get a job, many of them will just fall back on welfare and stay there," said another.
The organizers of the event - chiefly Future Cents founder Franca Petrucci - avoided a public discussion about the loss of the Services Canada money that has enabled the courses to be run all these years. Instead she celebrated the staff and lauded the students, many of whom have gone from high-risk or dysfunctional ways to productive lives in business, public service, and raising families outside the cycles of the street.
In private conversation, her anger was disclosed in detail. She said the federal government cut their grant (between $250,000 to $350,000 depending on the circumstances) which meant the Future Cents project was impossible to administrate. Other levels of government, agencies, and private supporters also contribute to the Future Cents project but their grants were not enough to keep the doors open and in fact would now have to be returned.
"They moved the funding administrators out of Prince George to a Resources Canada office in Vancouver, and from there I was told their funding policies were now earmarked for job training and job training to them meant trades programs, not getting street-kids and at-risk kids to the starting line for employment," Petrucci said. "We did research, we contacted other levels of government, but their budgets were already set, nobody was expecting this, and I have to say the provincial Ministry of Children and Family Development and [Prince George MLA] Shirley Bond have been awesome in all of this, but it was a federal decision that left everyone else out on a limb and I'm really afraid for what the true costs are going to be, over this decision."
A contingent of MCFD workers spoke, on condition of anonymity for fear of management reprisals, that Future Cents literally saved lives. The thrust of the program was to take at-risk kids who had talent and personal drive, and give them not just skills no one else was ever going to teach them, but also the spark of hope to get up in the morning and go to this special kind of class. That subtracted those youth from the social costs of lifelong, systemic dysfunction, and also added them to the positive side of the social ledger. They also represented the start of a new chain of productivity in their families and social circles.
The loss of that had young, tough, tattooed men in tears on Friday.
"I'm so straight I feel crooked," one former unemployed addict told Petrucci, in thanks for the program. That youth is now raising a family and holding down a regular job.
"I never would have met my beautiful wife, I wouldn't have my two stunning daughters, my car, my job, my home," said another.
"You have given us a forever within the numbered days [of the Future Cents semester], and for that we are grateful," added another.
One of the last staff members, Rikki Beaudet, a former youth in the program before joining the staff then becoming operations manager, said "You gave me hope when I didn't have any...and I was able to achieve things I never thought possible." Now Beaudet must find alternate employment.
Attempts to obtain a Service Canada comment were unsuccessful as of deadline.
