Saint John’s Bee Me Kidz Seeks Funding to Spread Its Wings to Fredericton
SAINT JOHN – Bee Me Kidz is seeking to raise $250,000 so it can bring its emotion-focused program for at-risk children and their families to Fredericton, and hopefully later, the rest of Atlantic Canada.
“Basically, we want funders on one side to take over the projects in Saint John and Fredericton as we expand, and then my role would transition to more of an administrative corporate role of rolling these out rather than funding specific projects. That would be the idea,” said founder and president Bryan Elliott, who has been funding Bee Me Kidz out of his own pocket.
Bee Me Kidz provides free programs focusing on emotional intelligence around Greater Saint John to children of all socio-economic backgrounds. It has a location picked for expansion in Fredericton, but needs some funding to begin the program there in September or January.
Elliott, the CEO and founder of Toronto-based Consolidated Energy Solutions Inc. (CES), poured $850,000 into the non-profit organization last year. As Bee Me Kidz expands, Elliott aims to have every donation dollar go into programming, while he continues to carry the administrative costs.
“We’ve worked to have a demonstratable, scalable model and as we find good partners, we would scale the plan according to funding,” he said. “It could be a funding partnership, but we’re very flexible. In Fredericton for example, we’re looking at potentially a sustainability committee that would look at continuous fundraising within the city to build and promote the program.”
Elliot said Bee Me Kidz may license its programming or scale up in other ways, but the non-profit wants to oversee all operations to ensure the same standards are applied everywhere.
Elliott, who grew up in Quispamsis, started Bee Me Kidz in 2014 with his wife, Victoria, and founding executive director Melissa “Missy” Bewick to help solve the poverty problem in the Greater Saint John area after a call from his mother.
The group mapped out Saint John’s non-profit landscape to ensure they would be filling a gap instead of duplicating services. Bewick said despite many available resources and great classroom teachers, many children weren’t graduating from high school, contributing to the cycle of poverty.
With Bee Me Kidz, they want to make sure children will have the tools to succeed from a young age. This includes teaching them the skills to understand and handle their emotions, boosting their self-esteem and providing a nutritious breakfast.
“One of the focus of our program is to give them the confidence to succeed [in school and life], and understand how they’re feeling and not blame themselves if something is happening at home, or communicate how they’re feeling when they’re going through that time in their life,” Bewick said.
“To really see the child grow, we need to have everybody speaking the same language. So we work with the parents, teaching them what their children are learning,” she said.
“We deal with the whole community – the child, the parent, the school, the teachers,” said Elliott.
This allows the parents to have a support system through parent groups, each with a parent leader who has been in poverty and gotten out.
“It’s hard to be a parent. There’s no one handbook about being a parent. And if you have a network, you’d be able to talk about the things you’re going through and be able to share what works well for your child. It’s also nice to just have a laugh,” Bewick said.
A Non-Profit That’s Run Like A Business
Bee Me Kidz started with 27 students and 12 parents in one location four years ago. Today, it serves over 1,500 individuals a week, including 150 parents. Its Saturday program is available at four centres and the in-school program is offered in five elementary schools. Around 65 part-time staff and five full-time employees, including Bewick, work with these families.
A recent evaluation by University of New Brunswick’s Institute of Research, Data and Training found 91 per cent of Bee Me Kidz’s students have an improved self-esteem and 89 per cent of the parents said their mental health improved by attending the program. Some 72 per cent of the parents also saw improved relationships with their children.
Measuring that impact is key to Bee Me Kidz’s operation, Bewick said. The charity is run with business principles in mind to ensure its effectiveness. Bee Me Kidz mirrors many of the structures Elliott uses in his company, from human resources to banking relationships.
Elliott said not only is he encouraged by his Christian faith to contribute, funding the non-profit himself allowed his team to create a model that’s proven to work. Now he wants others in the private sector to step up, too.
“One of the things we wanted to do is to give an avenue for entrepreneurs or companies that do have funds available to have something they can pour back into, to have something that was proven and tested because so often, people don’t know what to do or where to put their horsepower behind,” he said.
“Bee me Kidz is a program based on hope and love, it’s what the world’s missing and what’s needed in society. Some of these families are hopeless or they don’t know a better way. So, we treat them with respect and kindness and equality, and we work together to have a better outcome for everyone,” he added.