Boys and Girls Clubs of Dorchester Inc.

Our ultimate goal for intended impact is to provide a safe haven and life-enhancing programs to the youth of Dorchester, Massachusetts. This goal embodies our mission to inspire and enable all young people, from diverse circumstances, to realize their full potential by providing opportunities for personal growth to become contributing, caring and responsible members of the community. Our target population is youth ages 5-18 living in and around Dorchester, MA. Fostering children's continual, positive progression from infancy to young adulthood, so that they may achieve the greatest possible success in life, is the larger purpose behind everything we do. Our long-term vision is to be the premier provider of hope and opportunity to the youth of our community by providing high-quality services through well-planned, sustainable growth. We are dedicated to ensuring that youth have access to quality programs that will enhance their lives and shape their futures. We continually seek ways to bring our services to a higher level to the benefit of our community and to meet the diverse needs of children of all backgrounds and abilities.

We incorporate the research-based “Five Key Elements for Positive Youth Development” set forth by Boys & Girls Clubs of America:

1. Safe, positive environment
2. Fun and sense of belonging
3. Supportive relationships
4. Meaningful opportunities and expectations
5. Formal and informal recognition

Caring Program Directors serve as “champions” who encourage youth to pursue academic success, make healthy choices, be community leaders and set goals. Through their participation, youth mitigate risk factors and gain competencies to build resilience:

• Intrapersonal skills: Youth manage their emotions, take ownership over their learning and express themselves appropriately
• Interpersonal skills: Youth develop healthy, supportive relationships with peers and adults of all backgrounds/abilities, learn to negotiate conflict and demonstrate empathy
• Self-realization skills: Youth set and achieve goals, connect goals to actions and commit to a personal plan leading to life success
• Healthy lifestyles: Youth understand and commit to positive behaviors that support their mental, emotional and physical well-being
• Sense of community: Youth develop solid connections to their community, making them more likely to avoid negative behaviors
• Decision-making: Youth develop problem-solving and decision-making skills, accept responsibility and assess situations and potential outcomes

Our programs' design was informed by many years of experience in serving the youth of Dorchester. BGCD has led the charge among youth development organizations in Boston for four decades. Our reputation for exceptional programming, informed leadership and dedication to the community we serve has positioned the Club as one of the region's foremost authorities on youth development and best practices in serving at-risk youth. This history of excellence was one of the lead factors in BGCA's decision to entrust our Club with the rehabilitation of the Boys & Girls Club of Brockton, enabling Brockton to continue to serve their community - a community in desperate need of a successful Boys & Girls Club. Developing effective responses to unmet needs in our community has inspired our program design since our inception. We have received program excellence awards from BGCA for Safe Summer Streets, our groundbreaking nighttime summer program for teens. We were also chosen as a 2014 Merit Award winner for Project B.I.N.D. (Boston Inclusion Network for Disabilities), an initiative designed to encourage the educational and social enrichment and advancement of children with special needs throughout Dorchester and the surrounding neighborhoods. In 2015 we were chosen as a Merit Award winner for our inclusive Challenger Soccer program, run as a part of Project B.I.N.D., and in 2016, we won the same award for our Music Clubhouse. In 2020, our Who Am I Project, a leadership and communication program for teens, was awarded an Honor Award by BGCA, the top program honor it bestows.

Setting and accomplishing reasonable but worthwhile near-term objectives has always been an important part of the way we pursue our long-term vision to be the premier provider of hope and opportunity to the youth of our community by providing high-quality services through well-planned, sustainable growth. For example, several years ago we determined that we could better serve our youth by rolling out a program for younger children than we served at the time. Through an internal and external evaluation process we identified a critical age group that was being underserved in the community and at the Club: children ages 3-5. Our Club previously consisted of two wings, our early education and care program and our out-of-school time programs for youth ages 6-18. The unintentional gap between those two areas meant that children graduating from our early education program could not feed directly into our membership program for school-age youth. In response, we rolled out a strategic initiative to create a natural bridge between these programs to provide a continuity of services and support for youth as young as two months through 18 years of age. Executing this strategic initiative involved two steps. First, we lowered the minimum membership age from six to five so that five-year-olds could benefit from our existing, high quality after-school and summer programs that support children's social, emotional, intellectual and creative development. Secondly, we developed dedicated programming for three, four and five-year-olds. These ""Learn To"" programs bridge the early childhood and membership areas of the Club and give young children an introduction to the activities they can explore further when they are old enough to become Club members. For example, Learn to Swim might later inspire them to join the swim team; Learn to Tumble could spark an interest in yoga, gymnastics or dance. Through this evaluative process, we have built a web of support to help youth reach developmental and educational milestones at every life stage from infancy to young adulthood, ultimately leading them to success in adulthood. As children grow and progress from grade to grade, they find at our Boys & Girls Club year-round activities designed to help them thrive at every developmental stage. In this way, we now promote a comprehensive, continual progression toward developmental, educational and career-related outcomes that will enable youth to reach their full potential.