Cortes Island Children's and Youth programs

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Cortes Community Health Association (CCHA) has been offering Youth Programs for more than 15 years. Serene Williams’ association goes back to 2009 when, shortly after moving to Cortes Island, she became the Teen Szene Co-ordinator. She married after that and now has two children of her own. They were initially homeschooled but when both of her children registered for the Cortes Island School, in September 2022, Williams became the Youth Programs Manager for the Cortes Community Health Association. 


“I love it when I am filling in for one of the facilitators for these programs, and I get to go and actually be interacting with groups of kids. I’ve known most of them since they were toddlers, or babies. I have watched them grow up on Cortes. It is so sweet to watch them interact with each other and watch their creativity and their energy. It's part of why I enjoy my job,” she explained.


“What I'm really proud of right now is that this year, the 2023/2024 school year, we have 77 kids in total attending our programs, including 20 from the Cortes Island Academy and 56 from the elementary school. I think that is a phenomenal number for Cortes. We have a large number of the population of Cortes kids attending our programs, which includes home learners also.”  


“At this point in time, we have 6 program facilitators: Kelly, Lydia, Claudia, Katrina, Steph, and Jasmine. A few of them do more than 1 program. Without great facilitators, we really can't have great programming. So I am so pleased to be able to have our staff going strong and continuing on from year to year.”  


“Right now, we offer programs for all school age kids from kindergarten to grade 12. All of our programs are drop in, so we never know from week to week who's going to show up, or how many kids they will have. Sometimes the numbers are smaller, sometimes it's bigger, and that creates some challenges just to be able to manage the group of kids and their particular dynamics.”


“We have five programs at this point.”