Committee member

I’m Maggie Snow and I’m the Executive Director at the SPLASH Centre – Harbour Grace Community Youth Network. I represent the youth population on the Steering Committee.

I’m a current resident of South River, where I live with my husband and our beautiful daughter, Audrey. I began working at the SPLASH Centre almost 10 years ago with the Summer Day Camp Program. My background is in primary/elementary education – but through my experience with the SPLASH Centre, I quickly realized my true passion was in advocacy work. As such, I have worked in various positions with the Centre and was happy to accept the position as Executive Director in 2013.

The SPLASH Centre is a part of the provincial Community Youth Network. Our mandate is to engage youth and foster their development through provision of programs and services that support learning, skill development and civic engagement. We offer a “Drop In” Centre for youth between the ages 12 – 18 to come socialize in a safe, supportive and non-judgement environment. We also offer specialized programs for children and the community, including Changing Lanes, Summer Day Camp, Linkages, and Strengthening Families for the Future to name a few! We offer a hot supper every day, transportation to and from the Centre, a Community Youth Coordinator on site, and through a partnership with Eastern Health we have adolescent mental health and addictions social worker for onsite programs and counselling. We also try to be as active as possible in the community through special events and volunteerism – we could be up to anything from planning craft sales, volunteering at the food bank or building picnic tables for the community. The SPLASH Centre has been a member of the Eastern Regional Wellness Coalition for the past several years and have been fortunate enough to offer special programming thanks to funding from the Coalition.

I was happy to accept an invitation to sit on the Steering Committee earlier this year and am fortunate to be a part of such a wonderful group. The coalition provides continual educational opportunities and invaluable networking opportunities to help provide members enhanced programming ideas and services. The partnerships available within the members of Coalition provides vast partnerships and knowledge sharing. I especially love the fact the Eastern Regional Wellness Coalition provides support and a focus on what’s available and happening in rural Newfoundland. We live in such a large geographical area, but the Eastern Regional Wellness Coalition helps to lessen the gap. I encourage all community groups to sign up and be active members of the Coalition – it’s worth it, I promise!

If I were to provide advice to community groups, I would share the wisdom of Helen Keller, “Alone we can do so little; Together we can do so much.” These words are so true – especially within community based groups. We need to be a team to provide the best provisions to our communities. I also think it is so important to remember that we can all accomplish so much more if we don’t care who gets the credit.