Celebrating Inclusive Experiences with Between Friends CEO Kim Presser

Get ready to be inspired by our remarkable guest, Kim Presser, CEO of Between Friends. Be moved by her journey from a camp counselor to the head of an organization that profoundly impacts lives. Kim passionately shares the values that drive Between Friends: connection, growth, and belonging, illustrating how they not only uplift members but also deeply touch the hearts of volunteers and staff. Discover the magic of Camp Bonaventure, a unique summer camp that creates an authentic experience for children of all abilities, ensuring everyone has an unforgettable summer.

Also, join us as we shine a spotlight on Between Friends' fundraising feats, including their annual golf tournament that raised an astounding $107,000. Get insights into their other successful initiatives like the year-end campaign and the Friends in Motion event. Kim also expresses her deep appreciation for the Calgary Adapted Hub and their significant role in providing city-wide program training for kids.

Get Involved with Between Friends

About our Guest
Kimberley Presser is a dedicated visionary and trailblazer, currently serving as the CEO of Between Friends; an organization committed to providing quality social, recreation and development opportunities so that people with disabilities can connect, grow and belong.

In 2006, Kimberley's unyielding passion for making a difference led her to Calgary, where she joined the team at Camp Bonaventure as a group leader. Little did she know that this move would not only change her career trajectory but also shape her lifelong purpose. Between Friends quickly became more than a workplace—it became her second home, igniting her dedication to fostering equal opportunities and transforming lives.

As the CEO of Between Friends, she has spearheaded initiatives that challenge societal norms and perceptions, aiming to dismantle barriers that hinder the full participation of people with disabilities in recreational activities. Her tenacious drive to bridge gaps and cultivate an inclusive environment has touched the lives of countless individuals, fostering a sense of belonging and empowerment.

Kimberley's influence extends beyond the boardroom. Her advocacy efforts have sparked collaborations through the Alberta Abilities Network with community partners, government agencies, and like-minded organizations, amplifying the impact of her mission.

With a remarkable ability to inspire, innovate, and lead by example, Kimberley Presser continues to be a guiding light in the journey towards a more inclusive and compassionate world.

What is Give Amplify Connect?

There’s a story behind every action. Give Amplify Connect is a podcast from the Wolfe Pack Warriors Foundation that gives a voice to the Alberta-based charitable organizations creating community impact, changing lives, and making a difference. Driven by honest conversations with host Kristy Wolfe, it’s a chance for passionate changemakers to share their story.

Learn more at wolfepackwarriors.com

Podcast music used with artist permission
"Okay" by Ellen Braun

Transcript

Kim Presser: 0:00

Honestly volunteering or spreading the word is really the biggest ask. We've been around for 40 years. Many people don't know about us and if people do know about us, like you just said, we're still learning.

Introduction: 0:15

Welcome to Give Amplify Connect, the Wolfe Pack Warriors Foundation podcast that dives deeper into the stories of the charitable organizations in Alberta that are making a difference. Host and producer Kristy Wolfe sits down with the leaders of the nonprofit world to learn more about their purpose, hopes and dreams. Settle in for an honest conversation with Kristy about the impact people are making in their communities and how they keep moving forward.

Kristy Wolfe: 0:43

Kim, we're so happy to have you here. Will you take a second and introduce yourself?

Kim Presser: 0:48

Absolutely, thanks for having me. So my name is Kim Presser, I am the CEO of Between Friends, and I've been with the organization just over 18 years, which has been pretty much my entire adult life hood.

Kristy Wolfe: 1:02

Oh, that's perfect and OK. What is Between Friends?

Kim Presser: 1:05

Between Friends is a charitable organization that provides quality social recreation and development opportunities so that people with disabilities can connect, grow and belong. Every year, around 540 children, youth and adults with disabilities seek social and recreational activities that are fundamental to enriching self-esteem, quality of life, as well as mental and physical health. The programs that Between Friends offers become pivotal in the lives of our members as they decrease the degree of isolation that they may face in our community.

Kristy Wolfe: 1:37

And so, kim, you've said that you've been involved for 18 years. How did you get involved in the beginning?

Kim Presser: 1:42

That's a hilarious story. So I actually grew up in Ottawa and so I was in a child and youth degree program at university there and I was working with a little buddy who had Down syndrome in school, and so I literally Googled camp for kids with disabilities, and Between Friends popped up and I kind of looked at my parents and was like I have never left the city of Ottawa. What should I do? So I packed everything up, I moved to Calgary, I planned to spend one summer at Camp Bonaventure and I never left.

Kim Presser: 2:21

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--tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-ordinal: ; --tw-slashed-zero: ; --tw-numeric-figure: ; --tw-numeric-spacing: ; --tw-numeric-fraction: ; --tw-ring-inset: ; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,. 5); --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-blur: ; --tw-brightness: ; --tw-contrast: ; --tw-grayscale: ; --tw-hue-rotate: ; --tw-invert: ; --tw-saturate: ; --tw-sepia: ; --tw-drop-shadow: ; --tw-backdrop-blur: ; --tw-backdrop-brightness: ; --tw-backdrop-contrast: ; --tw-backdrop-grayscale: ; --tw-backdrop-hue-rotate: ; --tw-backdrop-invert: ; --tw-backdrop-opacity: ; --tw-backdrop-saturate: ; --tw-backdrop-sepia: ; background-color: rgb(252, 252, 253);">.</span><span data-v-07c63b49="" class="transcript-element" data-mindex="8" data-eindex="22" data-key="822 141. 009" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-pan-x: ; --tw-pan-y: ; --tw-pinch-zoom: ; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-ordinal: ; --tw-slashed-zero: ; --tw-numeric-figure: ; --tw-numeric-spacing: ; --tw-numeric-fraction: ; --tw-ring-inset: ; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,. 5); --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-blur: ; --tw-brightness: ; --tw-contrast: ; --tw-grayscale: ; --tw-hue-rotate: ; --tw-invert: ; --tw-saturate: ; --tw-sepia: ; --tw-drop-shadow: ; --tw-backdrop-blur: ; --tw-backdrop-brightness: ; --tw-backdrop-contrast: ; --tw-backdrop-grayscale: ; --tw-backdrop-hue-rotate: ; --tw-backdrop-invert: ; --tw-backdrop-opacity: ; --tw-backdrop-saturate: ; --tw-backdrop-sepia: ; background-color: rgb(252, 252, 253);"> </span>y first summer moved into a team lead and then into the office and I think pretty much every job I think that our office has I have held at one point now.

Kristy Wolfe: 2:33

Well, and as CEO, that makes a big difference, knowing how all of the different parts of the organization work. I think that's a really good shout out for that idea that sometimes people get involved as a volunteer, thinking like this could never be my job. I'd love to do it, but it's not going to work out and just as you develop, things change right. So I think that was a great story to kind of introduce how just starting with volunteering or starting with like a camp job I was camp counselor too. I totally get this can lead to other things and build your resume.

Kim Presser: 3:04

At our organization we talk about connection, growth and belonging, and we always talk about it in the sense of our members, about how they connect with their peers, how they grow through our programs and have a place to belong. But what I thought was the coolest is it also transfers to our volunteers and our staff, and that's exactly what kept me involved for 18 years was I all of a sudden got to work with my best friends. I had a place where I went from being an 18 year old university student all the way up to being a CEO of a company and really moving across the country knowing nobody. I actually found a place where I belonged, and so it's just so neat how we see something that we developed for our members translate through to everyone who's involved in our organization.

Kristy Wolfe: 3:48

So I wonder how many people in your organization know all of that.

Kim Presser: 3:53

I'm pretty open with it. I like to share my story, especially now that I've been here for 18 years and I go down to camp. I often will introduce myself and say, yeah, I started here in 2005, 2006, and all of them were like I was not born yet and I say thank you for making me feel incredibly old right now, but it's a great opportunity for me to be able to share my story of, like this is your first job today. However, it was my first job too, and now look what it's done for me, and so it is. It's something that I like to talk about quite a bit, because I never envisioned becoming the CEO of Between Friends when I first started.

Kristy Wolfe: 4:34

Oh yeah, no, exactly Now that we're talking about Camp Bonaventure, would you explain Camp Bonaventure and tell us how it went this summer?

Kim Presser: 4:41

Yes, absolutely so. Between Friends Camp Bonaventure creates an authentic summer experience in the months of July and August for kids with disabilities and without. So we create excitement, friendship, fun, because all of our campers are encouraged to challenge themselves, develop their abilities. We do things like sailing, swimming, sports, gardening and many other exciting outdoor activities. So Camp is really structured for kiddos aged 4 to 17.

Kim Presser: 5:15

Although I will say we definitely have kiddos who are there like two, three year old, then sometimes up to 18, depending on situations. But what really makes our camp unique is that we divide our campers by their chronological age, so everyone is in groups with people who are in the same age group that they are, which means that they should have shared interests, more likely to create connections with each other, and then we are able to better customize our programming to that age group, because we definitely want one of our values as skills and so we definitely want our campers to leave that summer with something that they have gained throughout the summer. And really the kind of how we started Camp Bonaventure was for campers who are typically developing, camp is often this magical place that they get to go to in the summer.

Kim Presser: 6:06

Most of us have some sort of experience with a summer camp and kind of 40 years ago, when between friends started, that wasn't an opportunity for kids with disabilities. Often they were kept at home or parents just weren't ready or the community wasn't ready to accept them. So Camp kind of started with that understanding that everyone should have that same experience. Everyone should have that magic that Camp brings to somebody's life. Camp Bonaventure, 1982 is when it started and we've been going strong. Ever since, since the pandemic, we've expanded camp, so now we have two locations in Calgary, just because the demand is so high for our programs. And yeah, it's just another great opportunity for kids with and without disabilities to experience what everyone else gets to gets to do in the summer.

Kristy Wolfe: 6:55

Oh, I love that, and so do you have any examples of what participants or their families or your volunteers or your staff kind of had to say about the summer?

Kim Presser: 7:05

Yeah, so every summer we do an end of session survey and so we ask parents and campers kind of to give us some feedback on their summers, and so one that really kind of sticks out to me is, of our about 540 members, often over 40% of them sit on the autism spectrum. And so we had a little buddy this summer who has autism, which left mom and dad feeling fairly uncertain of where they could put him for camp just because of the needs that he has. And so camp this summer was his first ever summer camp experience, and mom and dad just commented that this past week at Camp Bonaventure has relieved me of all my uncertainties. The staff were so amazing, so caring and loving. My son skipped the whole way to camp in the morning and was full of smiles when I picked him up. I couldn't be happier with this whole experience. Oh my gosh.

Kristy Wolfe: 8:05

Yes, camp Bonaventure is one of your programs. You have many other programs and I know on the Wolfpack Warriors website we highlighted a couple of them inclusive services as well as adventurers. Will you tell us a little bit about each of those programs? So?

Kim Presser: 8:20

Adventurers is probably one of the coolest programs that we offer, in my opinion. So Adventurers is for adults aged 18 plus and we take them on vacation and so it's anywhere in Alberta. Sometimes we wander into BC, sketch one a little bit, but it's really providing what you and I would want to do with our friends over the summer, sometimes even in the winter. So we get groups of about eight adults together, they go to the West Edmonton Mall for a shopping trip and, you know, spin at the water park or whatever that is. We pick the destination and we provide the transportation, the staff and the food. But everything else is group led. So once they get to their destination they figure out what they want to do. So that might be Whitewater rafting in Kananaskis, that might be going to the Wolfdog Sanctuary, whatever that looks like. So it's really just a great opportunity for our adult members to kind of get away from the regular life and enjoy a nice little vacation with their friends.

Kim Presser: 9:26

And then inclusion services is our newest kind of venture. We were working a little bit on it pre-pandemic, but it was always on the side of somebody's table, and now it is a full-fledged service that we offer and basically we are just trying to work ourselves out of a job through our inclusion services. So we provide three different levels of training, one of which is a online learn at your own pace. Training this is just your fundamentals to working with someone with a disability how to be more compassionate, how to include someone in your workplace, those kinds of things. The next level is more intense.

Kim Presser: 10:05

So, let's say, one of the Wolfe Automotive places wanted to get together and we could host a training, and so it's really getting into more about what you do for your day-to-day job and how we can help you adapt what that looks like. So maybe that's making sure that you have Braille, at least one sign that someone could read. Or, if it's a restaurant, making sure that there's a menu that is in Braille, those kinds of things. And then the last one is a full policies and systems change work, and so going in and looking at the organization as a whole and how to change the direction of these organizations to be more inclusive, so that one day an organization like Between Friends doesn't have to exist. We don't want to be here doing this work. We're doing it because there's a need, but eventually we want people with disabilities to be able to be accepted into whatever community they want to be a part of and not require the services of a specialized program.

Kristy Wolfe: 11:06

So I can clearly see how businesses would take advantage of that program. Would educational institutions also do that?

Kim Presser: 11:13

Yes, so we are in the kind of beginning steps of talking with some of the universities here in Calgary to kind of develop different language programming, so for kind of two different things. Number one is so let's say you're gonna become a medical professional. We wholeheartedly believe before becoming a medical professional you should have some sort of diversity, equity and inclusion training to help you prepare for the types of folks you might run into in your workplace. But on the other side, there isn't currently an accredited support worker program. So if you are a person, let's say a parent, you have a kid with a disability, you want to hire a support worker. There is no accreditation. So you're just hiring someone based off of meeting them, maybe a reference, and so working towards some sort of standardization of these. People are trained by between friends. They have been certified that they are inclusive and able to work with my person. So those are kind of the two different educational streams that we're looking at.

Kristy Wolfe: 12:16

Oh, I love that, and I am thinking of so many organizations that I'm gonna quiz you after to see if you already have made connections with them. One of the things that the Wolfe Pack Warriors Foundation stands for is give, amplify, connect that idea that we make a financial donation and sometimes there's other ways that we can give back as well. Amplify the message. That's part of what this podcast is all about. Having and having this conversation, and even though we've been talking and we've planned this campaign with you, there's a lot that I just learned right in this podcast. So I am really excited to just have the conversation and then connect. That's another part of it. Where are there other organizations, are there businesses that we can help connect you to, that might support some of the work you're doing? So I'm so glad you explained all of that, because now I have a better understanding of it as well. If people are looking to get involved with your training program or looking to volunteer, how would they do that?

Kim Presser: 13:06

The easiest and simplest way is our website, so www. betweenfriends. ab. ca. We always say the biggest support that we can get from people is obviously financially. Dollars go a long way, but honestly, volunteering or spreading the word is really the biggest ask. We've been around for 40 years and many people don't know about us. And if people do know about us, like you just said, we're still learning. And so going to our website educating yourself on all the different services that we have, but then going through and looking at our inclusion training if there's a company who wants to do that kind of training with us. There's a whole section on getting involved in volunteering or employment. We are often a lot of people's first jobs, so there's always different ways to get involved. It's actually on our website. Get Involved is the topic to look at and so many different ways that people can support.

Kristy Wolfe: 14:06

And I will actually add that Get Involved section to the show notes of this podcast so that it's very clear and easy, because everybody loves something that they can just click on and get right to the right spot. Ok, you had a golf tournament recently. That's your big fundraiser for the year. How did that go?

Kim Presser: 14:21

Golf tournament went amazing. I'm so happy to report we raised just over $107,000. Our target was originally 105. We freaked ourselves out a little bit so we internally lowered it to 95 to go oh my god, are we going to do it? And we ended the day at 107. So we could not be more grateful and thankful to all of our supporters. We did our silent auction online this year, which was really successful. We had on course entertainment, so we had Ryan from the Humboldt Broncos and he was doing a seated swing from his wheelchair and he was teeing off for a cause. We just had so much fun and we're looking forward to doing it again next year. Our tournament's always at Silver Tip in Canmore, so you can't really beat the location, the scenery. The last few years it's been like 45 degrees every day, so it's hot, but I'd rather that than any other types of weather that we could get in August in the mountains.

Kristy Wolfe: 15:20

Are there any other fundraisers that you do throughout the year that we can help you kind of share?

Kim Presser: 15:24

Yeah, absolutely so. The kind of two other big ones we do is we have a year end campaign, so it kind of kicks off on Giving Tuesdays, so closer to, I guess, in between that Black Friday, christmas period. So it's just an end of year campaign. Often it's letter writing, but obviously everyone's welcome to take part in it. And then the other, more of a fun fundraiser is what we call Friends in Motion and it takes place in the month of March and it's often an Olympic-style event where small teams of about four to six are paired up with one of our members and they take part in different activities like mini pot, virtual bowling, virtual golf and arcade basketball. They raise money and challenge each other and then come together at shanks and take part in the day. So that's our other kind of more entertaining event, if you wish.

Kristy Wolfe: 16:25

Perfect. Ok, thank you for sharing those with me, and we'll be sure to post about them when I see. I keep my eye on what you're doing in social, and that's how watching the posts that you did about Camp Bonaventure, and just the smiles on kids' faces, was really impactful, and so I would also suggest people go find them on Instagram. You're on Facebook, you're on LinkedIn, yup. Final question for today Tell us about another organization or a person who you've worked with or who you'd like to work with or who inspires you.

Kim Presser: 16:54

Oh my gosh, there's so many. I probably would love to shout out the Calgary Adapted Hub, powered by Jumpstart. I get to work with Ashley Fox on a pretty regular basis. Her and I both co-chair the Alberta Abilities Network Recreation Table, and they are doing very similar work to what we're doing, but more in the world of being a resource versus the actual provider of it. So they're a go-to resource for inclusive and accessible sports and recreation in the city of Calgary, and so they offer different opportunities for children. It's a lot around gaining confidence, building friendship and getting active, which is very similar to the work that we're doing. But the cool part about Adapted Hub is they are actually going out to the bigger organizations in Calgary, like the wind sports, the city, those kinds of things, and they are helping us provide our training so that kiddos can access programs. So we're often in heavy partnership with them. So I'm just very impressed with the work they do.

Kristy Wolfe: 18:04

Well, kim, thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation with us. We really appreciate the work you're doing and definitely, if you are listening to this podcast, please go follow between friends, find out what they're up to tell one other person. We all know somebody who would benefit from this, so just pass the word along Again.

Kim Presser: 18:23

Kim, thank you. Thank you so much, Christy. We're really appreciative of everything you and Wolfpack Warriors have done.

Kristy Wolfe: 18:29

Thanks for joining us today. The purpose of the Wolfe Pack Warriors Foundation is to give, amplify and connect. Visit our website, www. wolfepackwarriors. com to learn more about this initiative or connect with us about a registered charity that is important to you. Don't miss the next episode. Follow Give, amplify Connect on your favorite podcast platform to hear from other Alberta-based nonprofits about the work they are doing. On a final note, remember to take care of yourself and your pack.

Introduction: 19:04

Thank you.