PITCHING IN FOR PLAYTIME

Local CAS given 200 board games

Two hundred board games — from Jenga to Monopoly to a fishing game tailored to very young children — are being distributed to Children’s Aid Society families thanks to local philanthropist Sam Sinjari. The games are going to “kin families,” comprised of a child who for various reasons can’t live with parents, and caregivers who are related or close friends. The Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society has 118 kin families caring for 172 children.

“I wanted to help them because there’s a big need, some of these caregivers (such as grandparents) are surprise parents again,” Sinjari said Wednesday after a presentation at the CAS headquarters on Riverside Drive East. Some of these caregivers may be on pensions, holding off retiring or working extra hours, he said. “And I think a board game is a good way for them to sit down and do something that, regardless of the age difference between the caregiver and child, it’s something that’s universal that they can play.” And playing helps them talk and bond, said Sinjari. He said his goal is to help children and families thrive. “Every child should live in a home where they feel valued, loved and respected.”

The CAS caseworkers who oversee these kin families will make sure the board games are distributed prior to Family Day on Monday, said CAS spokesman Mike Clark. Sinjari made a similar donation of board games one year ago. “It’s really a way to bring families together for Family Day,” Clark said. “It offers a chance to communicate together, bond together, spend quality time together.” The kin family caregivers come forward so that children who can’t live with parents can remain with people they’re biologically or culturally connected to, helping with what can be a traumatic situation, said Clark.

He said a kin family is “a positive experience when a child can, many times, stay in the same school, keep a lot of the same friends, stay in the same neighbourhood.”

It offers a chance to communicate together, bond together, spend quality time together.

DAN JANISSE Local businessman Sam Sinjari talks with Aaron Evans Jr. about one of the more than 200 new board games Sinjari donated to the Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society on Wednesday.