Tucker Britt, left, Brandon Taylor, and Liam Britt enjoy an educational game.
FOR KIDS’ SAKE
Boys & Girls Club of Glasgow-Barren County serving vital need Story by JOHN CLAYTON
T
he number of young people who belong to the Boys & Girls Club of Glasgow-Barren County is a testament to the club’s success and its important role in the community. The Boys & Girls Club serves about 130 young people ages 6 to 18, offering after-school programs during the academic year and afternoon summer camps during summer breaks. “We have a little over 200 kids who are registered, which means some of those kids can kind of fluctuate in and out, but for the most part our average daily attendance is very consistent with the same kids coming,” says Mallie Boston, executive director for the Boys & Girls Club
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of Glasgow-Barren County. “That being said, we’ve got binders on top of binders with names. If a whole group of kids left tonight, we could fill back up within the afternoon. “We have this wonderful building that’s fairly new, and it serves the kids that we have, but we’re always looking for ways to grow, because the need is not going to go away anytime soon,” Boston says. The annual fee for memberships in the nonprofit Boys & Girls Club is $45, which includes study time for homework, mentoring and tutoring, and after-school meals. “When you look at the community, there is no other place in Barren County
that you can pay $45 for an entire year and have your child get a hot meal every afternoon,” Boston says. “They get oneon-one tutoring, and adults in our community mentor here, which means your kid can not only have the staff here at the Boys & Girls Club, but members of the community come to see them and work on specific things with them.”
BOSTON CALLING Boston began working as a volunteer at the Boys & Girls Club while she was a high school student. Now 24, the Glasgow native grew up seeing the challenges facing young people in the area. She wasn’t just someone helping the South Central Rural Telecommunications Cooperative
