Arts & Culture

The Boys & Girls Club of Truckee Meadows has been partnering with Reno Little Theater for more than 2 years to bring theater to members at the club. Sarah Phillips, the education outreach coordinator for RLT, has successfully directed 3 productions with members from our Pennington facility. Those productions were, “Help, I Need A Vacation!”, “Steal Your Rock n’ Roll” and “Wiley and the Hairy Man.” These productions have all been a huge success and the program continues to grow as more and more members are excited to join. Due to the success of the partnership with Reno Little Theater, we have been able to build partnerships with other performing arts organizations and people in our community.

TheaterWorks of Northern Nevada has given us the opportunity to bring theater to many other locations by having one of their instructors, Elisha, travel around teaching theater workshops which culminate with a mini production.

We have also been able to partner with Andi Glover, a local theater director. Andi successfully executed the production, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” with members at our Donald W. Reynolds facility.

Because we have a growing performing arts program, we have been able to showcase small snapshots of these productions at our annual awards banquet for the past two years. This gives us an opportunity to show off our talented and hardworking members!

Last year, a performance at the Banquet resulted in a gracious donor offering to pay for voice lessons for some of our talented members. Through that donation we partnered with a local voice coach, Tiffanie Story, to give some members formal voice lessons and coaching. Due to her success, more of our members will be able to have the opportunity to attend her lessons.

As we look to the future of the performing arts program at the Boys & Girls Club of Truckee Meadows, we want thank all our partners who have helped grow the program.

By EddiE GUTH

For more information about our Performing Arts programs, please contact Art Coordinator, Eddie Guth at (775) 360-2411 or eguth@bgctm.org.

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Jayla, Age 13

Programming: PROJECT ALERT

By Tre MonTgoMery

Our motto at the Boys & Girls Club of Truckee Meadows is, “Great Futures Start Here”. We are a positive place for kids and we do our best to make an impact on our members lives every day. With drug abuse becoming a frequent issue for youth in our community, we decided to adopt the Project ALERT program and offer it to all middle schoolers at our clubs.

Project ALERT is a classroom-based substance abuse prevention program for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders that is proven to reduce the experimental and continued use of drugs. Through a series of comprehensive lessons, Project ALERT motivates students against drug use, cultivates non-use attitudes and beliefs, and equips teens with the skills and strategies they’ll use to resist drugs.

We believe every student deserves to be educated and given the tools to make a decision against using drugs. The best way to implement those tools is by learning and practicing with their peers using engaging activities in a classroom setting. Using this program, we provide members with supportive facts and statistics on drugs and alcohol. Each lesson has a situational video that correlates with the topic and then members are given an opportunity to act out their own scenes and situations. This is their favorite part because they got to laugh at the dreadful acting in the videos and then act out their own skits. It was clear to see that even though the members found the videos to be silly and goofy, the message was getting across. They would often refer back to the positive decisions they witnessed in the videos while doing their own skits.

The Boys & Girls Club of Truckee Meadows works hard to provide members the tools and practices they need in order to be productive, responsible citizens. We have the opportunity to play a significant role in preventing teenagers from experimenting with drugs and alcohol. The ultimate goal is to produce members who have a positive impact on their clubs, schools and communities. We believe this program is a great way to encourage some of our older, and most vulnerable, members in a positive manner. This is our opportunity to prepare all members for the building blocks to achieving a great future.

For more information about Project ALERT or our other Health & Lifeskills programs, please contact our HLS Coordinator, Tre Montgomery at (775) 360-2458 or tmontgomery@bgctm.org.

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