By Mary Owen
A proposed Boys & Girls Club is right in line with Aumsville’s vision of providing positive recreation opportunities for local youth, according to city officials.
“Aumsville needs a Boys & Girls Club because our town is growing, and we don’t have anywhere for the kids to go after school and in most cases, on Saturdays as well,” said Maryann Hills, Aumsville city administrator.
Hills was excited to see “13 individuals with a heart for youth come out on a cold night in January” to get the ball rolling. Six people formed a steering committee and the other seven committed to be part of the support group or volunteer, Hills said.
“Four more joined them at their last Cascade Boys & Girls Club steering committee meeting,” she said. “The school district is very involved!”
“Our kids don’t have after-school activities unless they are in sports,” Aumsville Elementary Principal Leanne Deffenbaugh said. “We see many kids getting involved with drugs, unsafe behavior, getting into trouble because they don’t have anything to do in our small town. This is happening at an earlier and earlier age now. We see this at the junior high level beginning in sixth grade and some even younger.”
Deffenbaugh believes supervised, planned activities with their peers will provide an alternative for these children.
“And hanging out with kids their own age will help them with school, too,” she said. “There will be so many important social skills that will be learned by from the Boys & Girls Club that will support what we do at school … help promote learning, exploration and healthy activities.”
“There are after-school care programs that parents have to pay for if they wish their child to be there,” Deffenbaugh told city officials. “These programs can only hold 15-25 students of the 633 in the school. One of the programs will no longer be there after this year!”
Aumsville Elementary is ranked 675 out of the top 721 elementary schools in Oregon, with 53 percent of students on the free- and reduced-lunch programs.
Cascade Junior High School has 552 students and Cascade High School, 719, adding to the need for a local teen center. The median household income for Aumsville is $56,380. The city currently has a low crime rate and has many volunteers willing to participate in city undertakings.
Danielle Janes, a Boys & Girls Club alumni and advocate for starting a local program, believes there is no time like the present to start a club in Aumsville.
“It will take the dedication, volunteer work, fundraising and love for our children’s future,” she said. “We are hoping to have it up and running by the fall of 2013.”
The steering committee recently completed a Community Readiness Assessment, which was submitted to Tim Sinatra, executive director the Boys & Girls Club of Salem and Marion and Polk counties. Last month, Sinatra toured a potential Aumsville site with Janes, Hills and Councilor Nico Casarez.
“All this work has the city council’s full support,” Hills said. “A key project goal outlined in the city’s Visioning Plan is to ‘support and encourage youth activities,’ to meet the noted need for community involvement and contributions to the growth of strong families.”
Reaching out to local youth has its roots in city council action taken more than a decade ago, and resulted in a summer recreation program in 2010, a joint effort by city administrators, planning commissioners and police officers, Hills said.
“They volunteer off-duty time to facilitate five youth activity events,” she said.
“With diminishing city funds, administrative assistant Lora Hofmann involved many donators and volunteers. Excitement and the numbers at each activity grew, local leaders were in support, and community members were appointed parks and recreation commissioners. It is the city’s goal to ultimately sustain the summer recreation program with the development of an independent Boys & Girls Club in Aumsville.”
Janes added, “In our community we find a great need for our young kids to have somewhere safe to be and to play where they can do homework and socialize with other kids. So with seeing this great need, we are doing something.”
Hills said until the proposed club becomes a reality, the city is proposing a new investment in the Youth & Families Fund in the city budget, “for receipt of grants, donations, sponsorships and fundraising revenue.”
“We will continue to support and encourage volunteer labor and successful fundraising activities, and seek new grant funding,” she added.
“Fundraising activities may be expanded to promote a closer, more enjoyable, supportive community, providing evidence of our city’s motto: ‘Aumsville – A Great Place to Live!’”
For more information, contact Hills at 503-749-2030 or e-mail her at maryann@aumsville.us.
