Recordpub.com - New life for Boys & Girls Club program Community Action Council will take over Ravenna site

By Diane Smith

Record-Courier staff writer

When the Boys & Girls Club in Ravenna closes its doors Tuesday, it will be the end of an era.

But it will be a new beginning for Community Action Council, which plans to reopen the facility at 519 N. Walnut St. on Wednesday and operate youth programs there.

The Boys & Girls Club of the Western Reserve approached CAC earlier this month about taking over the building and its contents, including many items donated by Portage County residents and businesses.

David Shea, executive director of the Boys & Girls Club, said the details of the changeover, including the name of the new club, are still being worked out. But whatever its name, children will be able to walk into the club on Wednesday and participate in programs at no charge.

“We’re really excited about it,” Shea said.

Arlyne Habeeb, community outreach coordinator with CAC, will oversee the program. Staff from the Boys and Girls Club are being interviewed in hopes that some or all of them will stay on board, Shea said.

The building will house after-school programming, including mentoring, tutoring and games. Programming will be funded by existing grants, and Shea hopes to obtain other funding to help cover expenses.

Dani A. Robbins, executive director of the Boys and Girls Club, said the contents will remain in the building in accordance with the wishes of the parents.

“The Ravenna Club had received numerous gifts of equipment, furniture and computers over the last eighteen months and we are so grateful that those funders — Deluxe Corporation, Circle K Great Lakes and Ronald McDonald House Charities of Northeastern Ohio — have agreed that their gifts can continue to be utilized by our kids at their new program,” she stated.

Kate Somerville, whose 12-year-old daughter attends the Boys and Girls Club, said the CAC hosted a meeting with parents last week to introduce themselves. She was sad that the Boys and Girls Club name could not be used because it belongs to the national organization, but hoped all the existing staff would stay on.

“I’m over the moon and delighted that the club is not going to close,” she said. “It’s made such a difference in my daughter’s life. I’m excited that there is an agency that said, ‘We’ve got the energy, the time and the money to do something for these kids.’ ”

Somerville is a single mother, and said the staff members at the club have served as role models and mentors for her daughter.

“She’s a strait-A student and she loves to volunteer, and I can attribute very little of that to my parenting,” she said.

Ken Roach of Ravenna said he first began attending the club, then known as the Ravenna Boys Club, when he was 11. The club also had extensions in the Skeels and McElrath neighborhoods in Ravenna as well as Windham.

At the time, Roach, who has cerebral palsy, was unable to shoot pool, ping pong or any of the coordinated games, and would crawl down the steps backwards.

He said one day, the executive director said, “Kenny if you can’t walk in here like everyone else, you can’t come in.” Roach was in tears, but soon, the staff showed him how to hang on the wall and walk down. It took weeks of practice, and other members stopped and helped him.

He started playing pool at age 13 and two years later, he went to the state tournament in 8-ball, finishing third. One of the program directors taught Roach to drive at his farm in Edinburg.

“I just can’t say enough about boys and girls club,” he said. “I’ve heard many people say that the club is just a baby-sitting service or a latch-key program. It is much, much more than that. If they were to walk in my shoes they would realize a lot of kids have gotten educational, physical and social growth from the club that kids don’t get at school or home. And I am proud to say I am one of them. Ravenna needs a club and as long as it benefits a child, as it has me, I will support any organization that keeps it a club for kids.”

Ravenna Councilman Gene Brown, who attended the Boys Club as a child, said he was pleased to hear the news.

“I think the Community Action Council will be an excellent steward of the Boys and Girls Club,” he said. “They are a grassroots community organization that’s really dedicated to the Ravenna community as a whole.”

He said he is pleased that the club is not closing, noting the importance of after-school programming.

“If we don’t have after school programs such as these, students will be walking the streets, and will be entertained by elements of the community we don’t want them to be involved in,” he said.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Western Reserve’s Ravenna Club began in the late 1940s with after-school and summer activities for boys. By 1955 it had chartered with Boys Clubs of America and built the Walnut Street facility in 1964.

In 1980, the Ravenna Boys Club changed its charter and name to include girls. At the request of Boys & Girls Clubs of America, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Summit County began managing the Boys & Girls Club of Portage County in 2005. In 2006, the two organizations merged and in 2008 adopted the name Boys & Girls Clubs of the Western Reserve.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Western Reserve will continue to operate three Club sites in Akron along with its School Services Program to several Akron Public Schools and Saturday Club for Simon Perkins and Riedinger Middle School students.