Community league in south Edmonton undermanned, faces closure if it can’t recruit more volunteers

King Edward Park Community League may cease to exist due to a lack of volunteers. CTV News Edmonton's Marek Tkach reports.

A community league in south Edmonton is trying to drum up interest among neighbours to join its undermanned board.

If it can’t, the King Edward Park Community League might have to shut down, its vice-president says.

The south-side league is three people short of a full board, but while it’s been trying to recruit volunteers to join for the last two years, it’s struggled to find more, vice-president Heath McLeod told CTV News Edmonton on Friday.

He said the community league is holding a special general meeting on Feb. 22 at the neighbourhood hall to determine its fate. McLeod said the league has received good feedback from people interested in joining the board from letters it sent to neighbourhood homes late last month, but that it could consider disbanding if it can’t find more volunteers.

“On one side, it’s unfortunate that the league finds itself in this position. A lot of people have been volunteering for the league for a long time, and so it feels a little bit like a sore spot to have to have this happen,” McLeod said. “But on the plus side, it is a really good opportunity for people in the neighbourhood to build the kind of community that they want to be a part of, so I think that we have to look at it both ways.”

King Edward Park is located between Whyte and 76 avenues from the Mill Creek ravine east to 71 Street.

Electing a board is the only item on the meeting’s agenda.

“We’re going to have a little bit of information about what function community leagues perform,” McLeod said. “We’re going to have a couple of the niceties of a special general meeting, but the meat and potatoes of it is that we’re going to elect a board, and if we don’t elect a board that day, then we’re going to have to start another discussion, sort of a Plan B, which nobody really knows what that’s going to be yet.”

Laura Cunningham-Shpeley, the executive director of the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues, said volunteer levels across the city’s 163 leagues rise and fall from time to time.

“When neighbourhoods change over, things change,” Cunningham-Shpeley told CTV News Edmonton. “It’s just a time for us to get back out there and remind everyone who lives in this neighbourhood that they’re welcome.”

She said she can’t recall a time when a community league folded. Last year, the south-side Twin Brooks Community League paused operations, including operating its outdoor rink, until it could recruit enough volunteers.

Cunningham-Shpeley said the federation would take over the buildings of a community league if it folded and operate them, but that programming would wane until it found enough people to form a new board.

Volunteers serve in several community league capacities, including helping with and coordinating events, maintenance of facilities, serving on committees, and fundraising through casinos and bingos.

Cunningham-Shpeley added that volunteerism and how it’s coordinated and delivered “is changing a lot.”

“People are thinking about how they give their time differently,” she said. “Community leagues, like all non-profits, are trying to think about how can they reach out to people, how they can resonate with people, so that they will want to spend their special, precious hours with their community.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Marek Tkach