Boys and Girls Club joins with Kalamazoo’s
1:00 AM, Feb. 24, 2011
An afterschool club for disadvantaged youth appears to be on the rebound.
Three years after the Boys and Girls Club of Battle Creek closed for a month because of a lack of funding, the program is getting back in the game with help from a neighboring organization.
It entered a one-year management agreement with the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Kalamazoo on Aug. 1. Now with veteran Kalamazoo staff on its team, the Battle Creek club has refocused on what matters most — the kids.
“The original board members were too much taken up with being the biggest, the best, the grandest,” Board President Laura Walters said. “The focus should have been on the children.”
Former Board President Nancy Mullett said she was happy to see the new board working with Kalamazoo. She declined to say more.
The Battle Creek club opened in November 2006 with a $250,000 start-up grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Within six months, more than 1,000 5- to 18-year-old kids had joined the afterschool program.
When the start-up funding expired in June 2007, the Kellogg Foundation pitched in a $100,000 grant to sustain programming through the end of the year.
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All kids must learn chess.