Boys & Girls Clubs of St. Lucie County, Inc.

The mission of Boys & Girls Clubs of St. Lucie County (BGCSLC) is to enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens. Our work began in 1994, when a small group of dedicated civic leaders recognized that children had no place to go after school, and created a Boys & Girls Club in Fort Pierce to help keep kids off the streets. Since then we have grown to our current configuration, providing after-school services to a registered membership of more than 4,000 young people in Grades K-12 at six neighborhood Clubhouses, before- and after-school programs at 15 School-Based Clubs, and summer camps at several sites.

We also provide specialized services, including our truancy reduction program and the county’s Summer Food Program, to thousands more young people annually. In all, we serve more than 17,000 annually.

To fulfill our goals, we work with dozens of community partners, including St. Lucie Public Schools, to assess the changing needs of the county’s youth and to develop programs that meet those needs. For example, several years ago, we and partner agencies operating in the area of workforce development recognized that the county faced a shortage of qualified workers to fill jobs.
As a result, we and CareerSource Research Coast developed our Summer Career and College Boot Camp. In this program, teens learned some of the “soft skills,” such as communication and teamwork, that employers tell us are often missing in the candidates they see, participants also learned how to write resumes and college and employment applications and earned money through paid internships and jobs. They also took part in programs designed to increase their emotional intelligence, leadership skills, and knowledge of personal finance.
Recognizing that more teens and pre-teens could benefit from an expanded workforce program, we replaced the Summer Boot Camps with “Into the Future,” a year-round workforce initiative that offers the same curriculum plus the opportunity to participate in additional job-training programs.
Among them are our Culinary Program, located in a commercial kitchen at our Westside Club. Teens learn food preparation, customer service and other job skills while earning money preparing daily meals for 400 members who attend our Clubhouses. Teens also have the opportunity to train and qualify for their ServSafe certificates, allowing them to get jobs at restaurants.
We also offer teens workforce readiness opportunities on our Learn & Earn Food Truck and Trailer, which sells food at festivals and other events throughout the county. Teens earn money while learning customer service, food preparation, marketing, and maintenance skills.

Our organizational strategies are grounded in our 2022-25 Strategic Plan, developed and adopted last year by our leadership and Board. The Strategic Plan is based on three pillars: World-Class Clubs; Life-Enhancing Programs and Character-Developing Experiences; and Workforce Readiness – Hope and Opportunity.
In the area of World-Class Clubs, our three top goals are to maintain safety as our top priority by enhancing safety equipment and procedures; reach new youth in underserved areas by expanding Club facilities; and increase partnerships with community agencies to create wrap-around services for the whole family and to build the capacity of other organizations.
We have three overall goals in the area of Life-Enhancing Programs and Character-Developing Experiences: To increase emotional wellness activities that teach our members how to be happy, resilient and self-confident by managing and expressing their emotions; to address the COVID Slide in youth education caused by disruption of the academic year; and to implement specialized programs that create unique experiences for youth.
Similarly, our Workforce Readiness pillar also contains three goals: to provide hundreds of local teens with paid internships and real-life work experiences; to engage community partners to provide work-based learning opportunities; and to curate job training and certification opportunities such as culinary certifications.
Our organization is assisted in implementing each of these pillars by a task force of at least 25 representatives of local business and organizations and led by a member of our Board.
We base the development and delivery of our short- and long-term programming on four factors. 1) qualitative observations of community youth; 2) quantitative data collected from Federal, State, local and non-profit organizations, as well as research studies; 3) input from community members and groups; and 4) identified generational challenges affecting youth in St. Lucie County.

The expected outcomes and benefits of our programming, as measured through quantitative and qualitative means, include 1) reduced gang activity; 2) reduced substance abuse; 3) on-target high school graduation; 4) acquisition of workforce skills; 5) employment and/or internships; and 6) improved mental wellness, self-awareness, and positive decision-making.

BGCOFSLC supports youth (in Grades K-12) through six neighborhood Clubhouses strategically located in neighborhoods with the greatest need, 15 school-based Clubs, a summer camp site and, and through a recently-launched Pop-Up Club, which brings Club services to unserved neighborhoods in Port St. Lucie. Through these facilities, we provide youth with safe places to learn and play. We also give them and their families access to wrap-around services provided by our partner agencies.

We deliver our programs through professionally trained staff, qualified teachers. Volunteers from the community enrich our programming, providing our members with instruction on everything from reading to golf. These programs constitute the heart of the promise for the future made to St. Lucie County youth. Through them, we enable our young people to learn powerful life skills and introduce them to new experiences, helping them reach their full potential as healthy, productive adults.

We offer diverse program activities that are based on the interests and needs of the disadvantaged youth we serve. Examples of programming include:
• SMART Moves, a Boys & Girls Clubs of America program, provides age-appropriate instruction in techniques to help members resist the lures of drugs, alcohol, tobacco and premature sexual activity.
• BEATS!, a program at our Fort Pierce Teen Center, offers teens the use of a music production studio. The program teaches musicianship and music production skills.
• Money Matters promotes fiscal responsibility and independence among Club members of all ages by building their money management skills.
• Programs based in principles of Social and Emotional Learning help participants recognize and control their emotions, form positive relationships, become more emotionally mature and make responsible decisions.
• Power Hour provides homework help, tutoring, and high-yield learning activities
• STEM-oriented lessons that offer youth activities to boost their achievement in math and science and help them consider STEM careers
• Summer Brain Gain, which consists of week-long modules focused on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) subjects aligned with standards
• iReady, the St. Lucie Public Schools’ Web-based learning tool. Through our close partnership with the School District, our members have access to iReady. They can use it in our Clubs to complete their homework and special assignments designed to help those who are behind catch up with their work.
• Workforce Readiness programs, such as Into the Future provide youth with real-world experience and soft skills as well as employment opportunities and paid internships, giving them an edge when it comes time for them to find jobs.

We began in 1994 as a single neighborhood Clubhouse and now serve more than 4,000 registered members with six Clubhouses, 15 school-based Clubs and a summer camp.
We constantly look for opportunities to meet that changing needs of the young people we serve. Our leaders belong to many community organizations and task forces. In addition, we partner with dozens of community organizations and agencies, including the county school district, law enforcement agencies, businesses and other nonprofits. These connections, strengthened over 28 years, allow us to stay abreast of changes.
We partner with colleges and universities to provide opportunities for members. During the summer, 25 teens took part in an eight-week boot camp at Keiser University, where they learned about careers ranging from nursing to forensics. A partnership with Embry Riddle University to train members in drone operation. A new Indian River State College program will train teens in business and entrepreneurship skills.
We also respond in other ways. When schools reopened after COVID, we saw that many young people who suffer the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) because of family circumstances were worse off after a year away from brick-and-mortar classes. As a result, we increased the infusion of principles of Social and Emotional Learning into our programming.
Also, we've sought funding to bring counseling to Club members who are most in need. Earlier this year we received a grant for a pilot project in which two part-time counselors will work with members at two Clubhouses. We continue to pursue additional funding to extend these services to more members.
We work with Tykes & Teens, a nonprofit youth mental health organization that continues to train staff in Trauma-Informed Practices and also is providing compassion fatigue sessions for our staff.
Another way to measure progress is through members' accomplishments. In the most recent survey of Club members:
 95% received positive marks for behavior in school;
 90% of teens plan to attend a trade school or college;
 97% abstained from cigarette smoking;
 92% reported abstention from alcohol within 30 days of the survey;
 95% reported they maintained or increased their knowledge of how to avoid negative behaviors; and
 Members contributed more than 20,000 hours of community service.
We recognize we must be able to measure the success of each program, so we have instituted a policy of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI). Led by our Vice President of CQI, we are increasing our reliance on research-informed indicators, so we can measure the effectiveness of all the programs we offer.
We also have begun extensive employee training programs and a robust onboarding process for new employees. These initiatives, which provide skill-building opportunities and competency-focused trainings, help staff better understand how to collect and review the data that help us measure program quality.