Brandon Reece, the unit director for the Boys & Girls Club of Polk County, and Carol Cardona, the site director for the club on the junior high campus, presented a program for the Rotary Club of Livingston recently.
In its 20th year in Polk County and located at 1035 Liberty Ave. in Livingston, the local facility was recently upgraded with new paint, new bathroom tiles and sinks and new floors.
The club offers an after-school program and a summer session for students in kindergarten through high school. It costs $100 for the school year for the first child and $75 for each additional sibling.
“We have 62 kids after school. Summertime is bigger. We usually have 70-80,” Reece said, adding that the students range in age from five to 17 and the biggest group is the five to seven-year-olds.
“We have different activities and programs, a game room, a computer lab, a basketball court, soccer field and homework room,” Reece said.
“We also have the Panda Cares room which was made possible through a $45,000 grant from Panda Express. The room has new paint, a reading room, e-sports, podcasting, photography, cameras, a printer for photography, VR headsets. We’re very, very grateful for that and have people coming in to teach them how to use the various types of technology,” Reece said, adding there is also a program with Legos that will lead them into robotics at the high school level.
“I’m big on manners and we always make sure we love on them. I want to say thank you to anybody that does anything for the Boys & Girls Club. It’s for the kids who really matter. I put out an Amazon list on a Thursday and it was filled by Sunday,” Reece said.
Cardona spoke a little bit about the after-school program on the junior high campus.
“Junior high kids are a little bit harder to get to come in so we’re trying to come up with things that they’ll be interested in. We have tennis clinics twice a week, robotics and a gardening club,” she said.
“We’re trying to better their school and help them. We help them with homework, assignments, try to keep them passing and then we do the fun stuff,” Cardona said.
