The Lac La Ronge Indian Band celebrated the official opening of the Mikisiw Awasis Early Learning Centre Tuesday morning.
The new facility is located on Bell’s Point reserve.
Acting Chief Sam Roberts said the learning centre offers a number of services.
“We have four kindergarten classrooms, three daycare head start classrooms and one’s an early learning centre classroom,” he said. “We have a dental office, Jeannie Bird Dental Office, a fully equipped state of the art dental office in one of the areas.”
Roberts said once it is running at full capacity, the centre will be able to accommodate as many as 200 children.
The $4 million facility is located right across the street from Bell’s Point Elementary School.
He added the centre will fill some of the overflow need in services existing schools are simply unable to provide.
“Our overcrowded schools that we have right now, on the reserve, has been really impacting us and impacting our community with some of the kids who can’t attend school. So, some of them are staying home because of the overcrowding in our schools. So, we knew as a First Nation we had to step up.”
The acting chief said the La Ronge band initially considered expanding Bell’s Point school but after it was unable to secure federal government capital funding, it instead decided to take a bank loan and build a separate facility.
The new building is roughly 15,000 square feet.
In Cree, mikisiw awasis translates to “young eagle.”
With files from Abel Charles.
(PHOTO: Official leather band cutting for the opening of the Mikisiw Awasis Early Learning Centre. Photo by Abel Charles.)