Boys & Girls Club of Pawtucket

Who

Since 1900, the Boys & Girls Club of Pawtucket has been a lifesaving agency to youth and families in Pawtucket and surrounding communities. Our mission is to inspire and enable young people from Pawtucket and surrounding communities, especially those with greatest need, to realize their full potential as healthy, productive, responsible, and caring citizens.

The youth we serve come from challenging life circumstances and desperately need the programs we offer.

What

We provide a wide variety of daily programs to help our thousands of members realize their full potential.  Each afternoon youth choose from a variety of activities every hour which support the goals set in our priority areas:

Academic Success: High school graduation is an important goal for all of our members and we offer a variety of programs to help them reach this goal including: homework help, tutoring in math and reading, science programs and activities, lessons in our technology labs and much more. We also offer career counseling for teens. 

Confident Self-Expression Through the Arts: Our art programs provide members with both a creative outlet and exposure to a wide variety of artistic forms and influences.  The exposure members get to a wide range of arts helps them to understand the incredible and diverse world in which they live.  The Club enables youth to develop their capacity and cultural awareness through knowledge and appreciation of the visual arts, crafts, performing arts, and creative writing. 

Good Character & Citizenship: We strive to empower youth to support and influence the Club and our community, sustain meaningful relationships with others, develop a positive self-image, participate in the democratic process and respect their own and others’ cultural identities. Several of our programs which support this goal are: Torch & Keystone Clubs, peer and adult mentoring programs, and our Youth of the Year program. 

Healthy Lifestyles: We have several programs to help develop our members’ capacity to engage in positive behaviors that nurture their own well-being, set personal goals and live successfully as self-sufficient adults. These programs include: Passport to Manhood, SMART Girls, nutrition education and healthy cooking lessons, and Triple Play activities. We also offer a wide variety of recreational sports programs to help youth in developing a sense of fairness, positive use of leisure time, skills for stress management, appreciation for the environment and social skills.

And there’s more…a daily, nutritious, hot evening meal is served to every child who wants one – and for many of our members, this is the only hot meal they get. NO CHILD IS EVER TURNED AWAY.

Where

Our newly renovated and expanded 60,000 square foot Clubhouse in Pawtucket, RI includes a new Teen Center with computer lab, classroom space, a gym, and more, in addition to performing and visual arts studio spaces. We have space for quiet learning, indoor exercise, and most importantly, a place where kids know they will be warm and safe after-school. Our property also includes a nature trail, gardens, and riverfront land. Summer programs are also offered at our Camp Ramsbottom in Rehoboth, MA where there are 160 acres for outdoor summer fun.

Why

Locally, in Pawtucket, RI and surrounding communities, the need for quality out-of-school time programs is immense. Consider the statistics. Nearly half of the youth in Pawtucket and Central Falls now live in single-parent households and the majority of our members are children from families with only one parent.

Other critical and alarming indicators are highlighted below from the 2017 RI Kids Count Fact Book:

• 33% of all children living in Pawtucket and 42% of children living in Central Falls live in poverty;
• Only 31% of 3rd grade students in Pawtucket and 16% in Central Falls meet the grade level expectations for reading;
• Only 20% of 7th grade students in Pawtucket and 12% in Central Falls meet the grade level expectations for reading;
• 10% of the population of incarcerated youth in Rhode Island are from Pawtucket and 7% are from Central Falls while the cities only accounts for 7% and 3% respectively of the overall youth population in the state; and
• 32% of High School students in Pawtucket and 40% in Central Falls are identified by the schools as chronically absent.  
 

Too many of our kids live in poverty, struggle to meet their basic daily needs of food, clothing and shelter, have barriers to academic success, and are at high-risk of dropping out of school.

We need your help to make everything we do possible.  Please consider a gift to the Club to help support the amazing work we do with the youth in our community each and every day.