A Nova Scotia mainstay with the mission of advancing marginalized learners through innovation, empathy, volunteerism, diversity and partnership, EPIC has run its Youth Peer and Parents PEACE program for 13 years. It’s what founder and executive director Barry Waldman calls his bread and butter. Considering his and his team’s inspired dedication to the charity, it’s no surprise EPIC won highest-performing agency overall at last year’s Donner Awards, in addition to its prize in the category for children?s services.

Learning about your organization, it seems that an unwavering commitment was necessary to ensure the survival of this organization. Tell me about the achievements that underscore this point.

Well, we are charity that rose from the dead. We had a very stellar rise in first couple of years and we had a federal grant to cover almost the entire cost of the program and we were counting on it.

But then the funding didn’t come through. We had a board member who had to take out a second mortgage to keep the paycheques going.

So the only way to keep our peer-to-peer program going was by relying on our staff (who were on EI), who volunteered two days a week. And then we just gradually rebuilt from there. It’s kind of remarkable that the charity exists. People thought we were crazy to take it on in the first place and we probably were.

One board member told me recently he thought I was Don Quixote at the time. “Why did you not intervene?” I asked him. And he said, I didn’t want to be the one to tell you you couldn’t do it. It’s a matter of focus and persistence and believing that what you’re doing is right. Also, although it’s a voluntary board, three out of five [board members] have been on since the beginning. We encourage them to be board members for life.

Plus, we spend almost nothing on administering the program: 98.7% of all funds that come in go directly into charitable programming. And I’ve been the volunteer supervisor since the beginning and I don’t charge for those services.

A lot of places struggle getting participants. We don’t have that problem. At the core of the program is having slightly older youth mentoring and tutoring younger youth. And we don’t have difficulty getting either one. I think that leads to our last accomplishment, which is it’s a place that feels like a really well-functioning family. When a stranger walks in, they feel welcome. It’s something we really work at because atmosphere is critical when you’re dealing with marginalized kids.

What makes this place so special?

Lots of organizations do similar things with mentoring and others do tutoring but I haven’t yet seen a program that combines both mentoring and tutoring, where they’re given equal value and that has the setup of having older kids helping younger kids. We compare the magic of the program to a play production — so many people are working behind the scenes so that you are just focused on the performance.

And I’ve learned that learning is less about ability and more about motivation. You get a kid who wants to learn because this cool kid wants to work with them. The recipient will work harder at understanding. That’s where we feel we nurture that relationship because that’s the key to advancement and building self esteem.

Our safe haven principle is also unique. There’s a wide range of kids represented here, usually with a mix of academic and social risks. They’re prone to having real crises in their lives. When something goes wrong, the instinct in most organizations is to do what you can but if it looks scary or it’s something you haven’t dealt with before, you look to the authorities to refer them to. Part of the safe haven principle is the assumption that we are that somebody else. They came to us because we’re the end of the line so we need to take responsibility for whatever issues arise (short of 911 emergencies). We try not to bring in outside organizations or even parents unless we’re convinced it’s going to be helpful.

And I would say we have true partnerships. We have 22 community agencies and they’re all actively involved in referral services. And in the case of at-risk youth that are referred, we say to them, “you’re the experts, you decide what at-risk is and we’ll accept them; we’ll prioritize according to your priorities.” We tune into the needs of agencies and get a nice response as a result. Our numbers are stable, always growing, but manageable growth. Typically 4%, on average, of participants a year. Always growing, but incrementally.

What about the role of innovation at EPIC?

We have at least one new innovation every year. We don’t set out to do that; I think when you’re focused on organic growth, those things just happen naturally. Someone has a suggestion and you say, “yeah we never thought about that, we could do that.” For example, we had a youth police officer who said we were doing wonders for kids, can we help their parents? We stopped and scratched our heads and said, “well we never did that before, but it would make sense.” Helping parents is a big part of helping kids so we created Parents PEACE. It meets once a week for two hours for any parent with school-aged children. Parents support each other and we’re bringing in expertise and tools to work with.

When we first thought about it we didn’t have funding. But I said, “look it’s a good idea, it fits with what we’re doing, it makes sense, let’s start it and figure out how to pay for it later.” And that’s what we did. And we’ve done that repeatedly.

What are your greatest challenges?

We share one with all charities: financial strain. Our largest funder represents about 20% of our overall expenses and they let us know that in a little over a year they have to cut back their grants by 18%. And they’re anticipating further cuts later. It’s something you have to be prepared for. We’re always looking for new funding sources, things we can do on our own. It’s just a whole attitude. What new pavement are you pounding? What other directions are you going in other than just going back to the original?

Another challenge is our director who came in 13 years ago — and part of the reason why EPIC is so remarkable — is about to retire. Succession is a real issue for almost all charities, especially small ones. And so the first thing we did was convince her to ease her way out. She became a co-director at first and is helping someone else learn the ropes.

Finally, we worry about the high-risk kids who flourish while in the program but then face a point where the situation may catch up with them again. So we created a new project called Breakthrough, scheduled for September. We will bring together our past kids in a small group facilitated by youth facilitator and ask them to come in as volunteers to create a handbook, a youth guide for handling crises and developing resiliency. The idea is to give kids the tools to know they can do this themselves when we’re not there.

What are some of the lessons you have learned in running an award-winning organization?

You have to have the right people in the first place and put things in place to retain them. They have to be highly skilled, of course, but, more importantly, their values have to be aligned with those of the organization. And, in our case, we felt the volunteer spirit is very important. I do think it has an influence on the program in terms of setting the tone — we do this because we believe in it. All our staff volunteer for certain things related to the program. Overall, the number volunteer hours are very close to the number of paid staff hours.

Also, it’s much more manageable to have a project that grows organically and responds to administrative needs with a focus on sustainability.

And you have to avoid dependency on any one thing or person. And that includes me and my role. I always think about how to put things in place to keep it going, to not put yourself in a situation when you’re reliant on someone. And we have a backup plan for everything; that really helps things go smoothly.

We’ve also come to believe that you have to actively pursue and nurture partnerships. You’re a partner until proven otherwise but we’ve learned to be really clear about the nature of the partnership.

Finally, we believe in taking risks. Our feeling is that if you are very focused on the mission of the organization and insightful enough to have some sense that there is a clear path to get there, then the risky part is not a big consideration. In this way we’re more like a business that says if you don’t risk, you don’t grow.

The Donner Awards is Canada’s largest nonprofit awards program. An award valued at $5,000 is presented to a winning organization in each of seven different categories. One of these organizations is also granted the William H. Donner Award for Excellence in the Delivery of Social Services, valued at $20,000. Learn more and apply this year at www.donnerwawards.org.

Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance journalist, producer and communications consultant living in Toronto. She is also president of Elle Communications and can be reached at: info@ellecommunications.ca.

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