Muncie Boys and Girls Club, Inc.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Muncie’s Vision is: Provide a world-class Club Experience that assures success is within reach of every young person who enters our doors with all members on track to graduate from high school with a plan for the future, demonstrating good character and citizenship, and living a healthy lifestyle. To ensure that we operate on this model, we have four key strategic priorities:

1. Increase Program Quality. To achieve greater outcomes for youth and to live our mission, it is critical to achieve a high level of programming quality. Ensuring that each Club site is consistently providing relevant, engaging experiences and opportunities for kids and teens (Optimal Club Experience).
2. Strengthen the Organization. Driving impact and quality requires strong leadership, capacity and capability at every Club site. This includes leadership at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Muncie and board level, as well as unit leaders and youth development professions.
3. Diversify Organizational Resources, Visibility and Community Presence. Advocate for the Clubs to build awareness and importance of out-of-school time. Identify ways to collaborate and partner with other like-minded/missioned organizations and to diversity our human and capital resources.
4. Reach More Youth. As we pursue the first three priorities, we will aim to achieve incremental growth. This includes increasing daily participation in our programs; actively recruit and retain new teen members and finally look for long-term growth.

Success is a three-pronged strategy:
1. Build Youth Capacity: By implementing learning programs that build academic and social-emotional skills among youth of all ages. The Clubs focus on providing enriching experiences that develop essential skills such as communication, self-efficacy, perseverance, goal setting and problem solving. All these skills support success. Programming will be culturally responsible, inclusive and adaptable to meet youth where they are. These programs include opportunities for career exploration.
2. Build Staff Capacity: Equip staff with the tools, resources and professional development they need to cultivate a love of learning. We aim to build staff capacity to facilitate meaningful learning experiences throughout the Club day, including Academic Success programming. Professional development will elevate staff knowledge to facilitate Academic Success programs and experiences for youth to promote the development of effective, engaged and adaptable learners.
3. Build Club Capacity: Build Club capacity to develop a culture that loves learning and promotes interest in the exploring postsecondary opportunities. By assessing Club capacity to offer high-quality Academic Success programming, Clubs will focus efforts on developing a culture that promotes skill building, creativity, curiosity and imagination. The culture will establish strong local partnerships that support postsecondary readiness.

As stated earlier, we do stand proudly on the shoulders of generations of Club leaders, staff, volunteers and members who have valiantly positioned our Movement to have an even greater impact. Our governance is board driven. The board determines the goals of the organization and the CEO makes sure those goals are made a reality by working with the Senior Leadership Staff. All information then flows to the Director of Programs, Member Services, Office Managers and Youth Development Professionals (YDP).

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Muncie has set goals for our Club members as well: Respect the Club, Respect Yourself; Respect Others. These expectations are very similar to the expectations that Muncie Community Schools implemented in the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) . These expectations are in each Club site, YDP’s praise and reward Club members for following the expectation, and re-teach behaviors as needed.

When training our Youth Development Professionals (YDP’s), the Clubs look at what trainings are required for school employees by the Indiana Department of Education. Trainings that YDP’s participate in are CPR, First Aid, AED, Child Abuse Prevention, CACFP Training (Food Safety), PBIS, Suicide Prevention, Bloodborne Pathogens and Bullying Prevention.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Muncie’s Power Hour programs main objective is improving proficiency in reading and math by 15% per Club member. Club members learn and develop the daily habits of completing homework in a safe, quiet and supportive atmosphere supervised by youth development professionals who offer both encouragement and assistance. These activities are provided in both group and individual settings.

Club members receive a pretest from Woodcock Johnson in reading and math fluency before they start their 30 homework / educational sessions. This allows youth development professionals the ability to see where the struggles are for each Club member. Club members then participate in daily homework / education sessions which focuses on reading and math to help them improve. After the 30 homework / education sessions are completed, each Club member will take a posttest. Club members who have not improved by 15%, will continue with another 15 homework / education sessions and be retested.

Here is some of our results from our Club members since being in the program:
• Peyton is in 1st grade and started out with a grade equivalency of .70 in reading in September (below grade level). Between September and December 2019, Peyton had an improvement of 75% in reading and is now above reading level for his grade.
• Aaliyah is in 3rd grade and had a grade equivalency of 2.80 in math in September (below grade level). By December 2019, Aaliyah had improved in her math score by 321% and now is above grade level.
• Caitlyn is in 5th grade and was struggling in math with a 4th grade equivalency. By December 2019, Caitlyn showed an improvement of 140% and went from a 4th grade math level to an 8th grade math level.