Sanare Centre hosting Bonding Bingo

Posted on July 20, 2021 by 40 Mile Commentator

By Justin Seward

Commentator/Courier

Medicine Hat’s Sanare Centre has partnered with a number of southeast region agencies to provide families with Bonding Bingo this summer.

The Sanare Centre came up with the Bonding Bingo idea because they want to support families.

“What we wanted to do really was give families fun activities to do during COVID,” said Christina Johnson, Sanare Centre executive director.

“As an organization, we have known the last 16 months have been incredibly hard on families. And we wanted to give families fun things to do, to bring families together over the summer month (and) Bonding Bingo was created.”

Bonding Bingo works where participants go to the website https://sanarecentre.ca/bingo/, go in and sign up and contact their local Family and Community Support Services (FCSS) to get their kits and then log in online to participate in the 30 activities.

“Some of them are facilitative, some of them are different activities to do,” she said.

For example, Medalta provided some of the clay for an activity in the kit.

“So, one night, Medalta is going to come on and facilitate how to make something out of the clay,” she said.

An ice cream night will be provided from South Country Co-op so families can go pick up a 1.5 litre of ice cream.

Canadian Mental Health Association and the Medicine Hat Women’s Shelter  will be making a presentation at some point.

Johnson said there’s still a lot of time to sign up.

Local kit pick-up sites will be at both 40-Mile Regional locations in Bow Island and Foremost , Cypress County and Redcliff FCSS locations and the Sanare Centre in Medicine Hat.

Bonding Bingo runs until Aug. 15.

The Sanare Centre is trying to find funding to run the program past August.

The Centre promotes healing for sexual abuse victims.