Agency - Boys & Girls Club Of Fitchburg & Leominster

Our mission: “To inspire and enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible, and caring citizens.”

Description:
The Boys & Girls Club of Fitchburg and Leominster is part of a nationwide affiliation of local, autonomous organizations that work to help young people of all backgrounds develop the qualities they need to become responsible citizens and leaders. We are dedicated to ensuring that our community’s disadvantaged and at risk youngsters have greater access to quality programs and services to help them develop the qualities they need to become responsible citizens and leaders. We offer daily access to a broad range of programs for youth ages 8-18, in five Core Program Areas: Education and Career Development, Character and Leadership Development, Health and Life Skills, The Arts, and Sports, Fitness and Recreation.

Project Learn, our after school program, offers Power Hour, a homework help and tutoring program which enables Club members to develop the daily habit of completing homework and preparing for class in a safe, quiet, space with staff and volunteer encouragement and assistance. Our incentive program, Power Points, gives members rewards for hours of homework completed. Tutoring helps members gain proficiency and excel. After Power Hour, members become involved in High-yield learning activities. These activities help members to see the practical application of lessons taught in the classroom. They also help them to plan self-directed learning enrichment. We encourage our members to make positive and productive choices about how they spend their leisure time at the Club. We offer the following high-yield learning activities each week. These happen after POWER HOUR:
 Writing activities (one to two hours). These activities include writing recipes and grocery lists for cooking classes; taking phone messages as an office assistant; or writing letters to a pen pal or friend,
 Leisure reading (four to five hours). Reading opportunities include age-appropriate periodicals like Sports Illustrated for Kids or American Girl, newspapers, bulletin boards, game instructions, recipes,
 Discussions with knowledgeable adults (four to five hours). These include casual discussions with Club staff members, mentoring programs, career exploration, current events and issues. For example, we participate in the Newspapers In Education program, receiving the local newspaper daily. This allows the staff to read with and discuss current events after school and this coupled with our Guest Speaker program allows our participants the opportunity to reinforce curriculum frameworks.
 Helping others (two to three hours). Service activities could include cleaning up local neighborhoods, visiting nursing homes, assisting with a Club service project. We have two service clubs, they promote volunteerism, community service and leadership. Torch Club is for early adolescents and Keystone for the older.
 Games that sharpen cognitive skills (four to five hours). Skill-building games might include Scrabble®, Monopoly®, Jenga®, chess, pool, ping pong, etc.
Clubs vary their schedules to engage the largest number of members in the greatest variety of enhancement opportunities. The result is that the total Club becomes a learning center. Members use math skills in the gymnasium for score keeping, in the kitchen for cooking, in the art room for measuring. They practice literacy skills by reading rules to a new game, writing an article in the Club newsletter, or writing poetry for the bulletin board. Learning becomes synonymous with Club activities and Club members cannot wait to be a part of the fun!
We are also open during school vacations and during the summer, Monday through Friday, 8:30am to 6pm.

It must be noted that an important aspect of all this informal, out-of-school learning opportunities is their continuity with the skills and information needed for success in the school. This informal learning is happening at our clubhouses not only after school but also during school vacation weeks and during the summer helping to combat the loss of academic achievement commonly known as “summer loss”.

History:
The Boys in Girls Club of Fitchburg and Leominster began in 2002 in Leominster. A second Clubhouse opened in 2004 on the campus of Fitchburg State College. Club membership rapidly outgrew these temporary clubhouses, which merged in 2008 into a larger centrally located site. Our clubhouse is situated on a former private school on 8.5 acres of conservation land, amid the 164 plus park-like acres of the Trustees of the Reservation’s Doyle Conservation property. The club now offers year-round, after-school programs, including The Bruce Lawrence Teen Center.
We registered 10 youth in 2002. In 2008, we had over 400 registered.

The Boys & Girls Club of North Central Massachusetts legally changed their name in August of 2011. The name change reflects a board decision to focus on the kids of Fitchburg and Leominster and create room for other clubs to develop in the region.

Contact people:

Leanne Cyphers, Volunteer Coordinator, (phone), (email) Donata Martin, Executive Director, (phone), (email)

Address:

365 Lindell Avenue Leominster, MA 01453 (See a map)

North Central Ma Network of Nonprofit Organizational Profile

Organization Type:
	Youth Development