Staff photo / Ed Runyan... Jim Bird, Boys and Girls Club of Youngstown’s executive director, stands in the gymnasium of the club, which is on Oak Hill Avenue on the city’s South Side. The gymnasium is being renovated as part of a $3.5 million project.

YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County Board of Commissioners is the latest group providing funds to help the Boys & Girls Club renovate its facilities and programs in the heart of the South Side, 2105 Oak Hill Ave.

The $3.5 million project got a big boost with a $1.5 million congressional appropriation through former U.S. Rep Tim Ryan last year to create a “community park” with athletic facilities and community recreation. The land is called Kyle Park, which abuts the club’s building on its eastern side. The club owns the land, which extends to Market Street.

Jim Bird, Boys & Girls Club of Youngstown executive director, said the park project is the second of two phases the Boys & Girls Club has been working on for about 18 months. The first phase is the renovation of the Boys & Girls Club building and its programming.

Funding the the project started with a $750,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services that required a 25 percent match from the Boys & Girls Club. The club exceeded the $250,000 match and kept going.

The club’s funds and OMHAS funds together are expected to total more than $2 million for a $3.5 million project that includes the park, Bird said. The club still is trying to generate additional money to complete the funding. The county commissioners last week provided $100,000 toward the project.

The club hopes the building renovations will begin this September and be complete in May 2024. The outdoor park improvements likely will be finished in 2025, Bird said.

“The prime motivation for the renovation is to really push the club to be the club of the future — to really embrace what kids want to be a part of, to embrace the future and try to help kids to be prepared,” said Bird, who is related to legendary NBA player Larry Bird.

Jim Bird said the club provides programs to kids and encourages them to go to college. Its summer program starts Tuesday, and its after-school program recently ended for the year.

The club was created by the Rotary Club of Youngstown in 1969 and serves youth ages 6 to 18.

The first thing kids do when they arrive for the after-school program is the “Power Hour,” which is an hour of homework. That is followed by an activity such as basketball or other physical activity, followed by a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) activity and then art. They are fed a snack. They stay until about 6:30 p.m.

According to the club’s website, 59 percent of the club’s members are ages 12 and younger, 41 percent are teens, 98 percent are minority races or ethnicities, and 72 percent qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches. Sixty-four percent live in single-parent homes.

The club’s after-school goals are to “fill the gap between school and home,” Bird said.

“Every day after school and all summer long, we provide a safe and caring club experience for children between the ages of 6 and 18 from our Valley’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods, at no or little cost to their families,” according to the club’s website.

“At Boys & Girls Clubs of Youngstown, we believe that every child, regardless of income or life circumstance, should be empowered to excel in school, become good citizens and lead healthy, productive lives.”

The club served 10,136 healthy meals and snacks in 2021, held 139 sessions of individualized sports, recreation and exercise such as fishing, bowling, swimming, yoga, tennis and basketball, and took kids on 45 field trips and college tours (in person and virtual), according to the club’s “Impact Report.”

LEARNING LOSS

One of the big educational issues the Boys & Girls Club addresses is the “learning loss” to children as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning the amount of learning that dropped off because of the pandemic, Bird said.

With improved programs at the club, Bird said he hopes it also can overcome the “digital divide,” meaning lower academic achievement because of less internet access than other children.

The Boys & Girls Club also teaches about healthy lifestyles, healthy behaviors, teamwork and responsibility. “We provide a lot of perspectives on job training and development or career development and expose children to different careers that might be of interest to youth even as young as 9 or 10 years old,” Bird said.

The organization is trying to determine what children are interested in and “how can that be turned into a lifelong passion,” he said

For older children, the focus is on programming that answers the question: “How do you market yourself to a future employer or a school you want to attend?”

“The real hope I have toward this renewal of the Boys & Girls Club is to really have an anchor in the community. Right now it’s a very important place in the community. We want to show it as a stable organization and a positive place for kids to be and learn in a surrounding environment that can be dangerous at times. We want to be a place where kids can have fun and not have to worry.”

CHANGES PLANNED

Changes being planned for the club’s activity center include removing walls and replacing windows to let in more light and create a mezzanine that will provide quiet spaces. The gymnasium will be renovated, and improvements will be made to the exterior.

“We want a more positive space, and the rooms will be more flexible. You can open them up. There will be an enhanced kitchen and teen lounge, as well as career development space,” Bird said.

Some of the pool tables and bumper-pool tables are being removed to make more room for mobile gaming stations

“It’s not to just sit around and play games but to do gaming and learn team working in those gaming pods,” he said.

In the mezzanine, there will be space for quiet. “We live in a world that is so filled with noise and chatter, chaos that it’s a place to be quiet for reading, pausing for meditating,” Bird said.

The organization has endorsed the idea of using trauma-informed care to help children mature. “Everyone has their own trauma, their own challenge, their own difficulty. That doesn’t only have to do with socio-economic factors or race or age; it’s humanity,” he said.

“All of a sudden when you realize someone’s story, you realize what someone has gone through, it gives you a deeper sense of empathy and maybe you won’t be so quick to jump on their attitude,” he said.

Some of the new programming coming to the club is for mental health and wellness. The club has done a lot with art and art therapy this year and hopes to branch out into more musical opportunities, Bird said.

Bird has been executive director three years, arriving in June 2020, during the early days of COVID-19. The club opened more quickly than many agencies after the COVID-19 shutdown of early 2020. But the number of children at the facility has not risen past about 75 percent of pre-COVID levels, he said.

Because attracting older teens (ages 14 to 18) has been challenging, some of the new programming has been designed to be appealing to that age group, he said.

The club opened a program at the Mahoning County Juvenile Justice Center last year to reach out to such children who might not otherwise know about the club.

“That’s gone very well,” Bird said.