The Canadian Cancer Society will be closing their community office in Williams Lake before the end of the year.
Volunteer engagement coordinator for Northern BC, Nancy Shelford says the decision was made in conjunction with several levels of the organization.
“We monitor our costs and our activity in all of our programs closely as you can imagine because that’s something that donors expect of us. We have found that many of our offices the traffic has been declining over time as people turn to more web base to getting information from health care professionals.”
Shelford says that the office functions as a way to point people to the various services that they have which will still remain in place despite the office’s closure.
“Our programs such as financial support for low income, people traveling for cancer treatment, our peer support, our cancer information service line, all of these services and programs are still in place for the residents of Williams Lake,” she says.
“What we need to do and what we hope to work with local volunteers to do is to make sure that information about those services is available in some other format whether that is more information at the doctors offices, volunteers getting out talking to the community more to make sure they know about these services and programs.”
The last day for the Canadian Cancer Community Office in Williams Lake will be December 22, 2017.
“We know that between 2015-2030 the number of cancer cases in Canada is anticipated to rise by 40%. So it’s really important to us to make sure that our services are sustainable and that we are sustainable as an organization,” adds Shelford.
“Brick and mortars are just not a sustainable service for us.”