Big Brothers Big Sisters of Portage la Prairie's Annual General Meeting was this week.

"2016 was actually a hard year for us financially," says Dawn Froese, Executive Director. "We had to make some tough decisions and one of our staff was let go, but we're looking forward this year to recouping some of that and becoming stronger in 2017."

Froese says they always need more volunteers so they can help more kids in the community, but it's really the financial side of things they're struggling with.

Froese says they'll be out doing more fundraising this year. (Photo by Aaron Wilgosh)

"We've done a few more fundraisers this year, so you may have seen us out a little more than usual," laughs Froese. "We're really thankful that Bowl for Kids exceeded our expectations, so that was really good. We have the Duck Race coming up and we hope that will do even better, and the West Jet silent auction is on now too. So we're doing a few more things to help our bottom line."

Froese says they had 54 kids in a mentoring relationship last year and another 22 who participated in other types of programming.

"We also had some kids that went to Tim Hortons Camp," adds Froese. "We had one student go and be a youth in parliament with BBBS of Canada to meet the Prime Minister, which is really cool. So there was a lot of good things that happened over the year as well."