Colleen Mooney, the newly appointed executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa, is looking forward to helping create a safe and supportive place for the city's children and youth.
Mooney says she is “incredibly excited” to be joining the club, which counts 90 years of history in Ottawa.
“It’s such a fantastic organization that has such a great reputation,” says Mooney, who was born in La Tuque, Que., and has been living in Ottawa for 16 years. “I’m really interested in the work that they do.”
Mooney has centred on the club’s education and leadership programs as areas to continue growing upon. She wants to see even more youth come up through its homework groups and transition to the leadership program so that many can then give back to the organization as volunteers.
The homework club has been very successful so far, providing not only homework help but also a healthy snack each day. “It will be great to experience this program closer now in my new role,” says Mooney.
“Our homework club is something that we’re pretty proud of,” says Adam Joiner, the senior manager of the central and west regions of the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa, who oversees locations including Rochester Heights in Centretown.
Located on the west side of Centretown, Rochester Heights is an inner-city community located around a group of social housing units at Gladstone and Rochester.
The branch site runs five days a week out of the Cambridge Street Community Public School and has 140 registered members.
Joiner says 70 to 90 children receive assistance from the homework club each night, and notes that because English is a second language for many of the families, both children and parents are asking for support.
Mooney says she’s concerned about the increasing inequality in Canadian society and that education and social skills are key components of helping youth and children.
She adds that strengthening and ensuring the quality of programs is important for reaching more young people and for the success of the club.
“I think just having her meet all the kids and really feel intrinsically part of the program will be huge advantage for us,” says Joiner. “It’s awesome that we have a new person with a new set of eyes and we’re really excited for her to see it.”
“She brings the whole package to us and we’re very fortunate,” says Graham Macmillan, president of the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa’s board of directors.
He says Mooney has strong financial and strategic management skills, is a very compassionate individual and an outstanding leader.
Mooney held senior roles in the health care system before her most recent position at the Mountain Equipment Co-op in Ottawa, where she was the general manager of for 15 years.
In the non-profit sector, she sat as board chair for the Centretown Community Health Centre for three years and served as a national trustee for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
She holds a master’s degree in business administration from the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario and a bachelor of science in physical therapy from Queen’s University.
Macmillan says that a business outlook is very important in not-for-profit organizations but is often ignored.
“We’re a small but very complex organization,” says Macmillan. “We just need a business leader to consolidate the growth and let us expand further.”
The Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa has been engaging youth in the community since 1923 and now serves 4,500 children ages six to 18 at eight different locations throughout the city.
Mooney replaced former executive director Scott Bradford on Nov. 11. Bradford resigned after 12 years as the executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa to take on the same role with the Nanaimo Childcare Development Centre in B.C.
“As I started to tell family and friends about my new job,” says Mooney, “it seemed that everybody had a compelling story about someone that they knew that had really been helped by the Boys and Girls Club.”