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Date: 11/23/2021
HOLYOKE – The Holyoke Boys and Girls Club has remained open since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic as an emergency childcare program. The club was able to resume some of their normal activities during the summer and fall months and are now looking ahead to the upcoming holiday season.
According to President Eileen Cavanaugh, the Holyoke Boys and Girls Club ran a successful summer camp program with 125 kids this year. She said that the camp contained a combination of academic components and enrichment components to help re-engage youth after the pandemic.
“We tried our very best to get back into the swing of things,” she said. “We had a really strong literacy and math component to our summer programming this year in hopes of trying to address some of not only the summer learning loss but, quite honestly, the COVID-19 learning loss that our kids experienced.”
Cavanaugh said that the club also operated their satellite sites throughout the summer and were able to serve an additional 75 kids in partnership with the Holyoke Housing Authority.
They continued operating their dinner club program to provide and deliver healthy meals to youth in need in the city and the club resumed their teen membership program as well.
“We knew that we needed to start providing activities for that age group in particular. They were feeling an awful lot of isolation throughout COVID-19,” said Cavanaugh.
Both youth and teens spent as much time outside as possible to help with COVID-19 protocols, participating in activities such as swimming, basketball tournaments, four square, volleyball and more.
With schools operating in-person again, the Holyoke Boys and Girls Club has also reopened their after-school program for children ages five to 13 in kindergarten through eighth grade.
Cavanaugh said that this program provides youth a healthy snack, academic and homework support and an outside activity or enrichment activity in the gymnasium or through art.
The teen program continues to operate five nights a week and provides older kids an opportunity to participate in the volleyball program, basketball league, in the open gym and more.
“It’s really about making sure that the kids have a safe space to go to when they’re out of school,” said Cavanaugh.
With the holiday season approaching, Cavanaugh said that the club is gearing up for exciting seasonal activities.
“It’s an exciting time to be working with kids during the holidays. The kids get excited and we have a lot of community partners that we work with throughout the holidays to make sure that our families and our youth are, first off, going to have a happy holiday and then, if we can, help provide some kind of relief for them,” she said.
The Holyoke Boys and Girls Club will be partnering with United Way of Pioneer Valley to provide over 1,000 members pre-cooked Thanksgiving meals. Cavanaugh said they will be specifically targeting youth living in homeless shelters and youth coming from families that are struggling with food security.
“We’re really excited about the partnership with United Way. I think that’s going to be a really good relief for a lot of our families on the Thanksgiving holiday in particular,” she said.
The club will also be having a Thanksgiving community meal to provide their members and staff with another opportunity for a healthy meal and socialization.
According to Cavanaugh, the club will be partnering with Holyoke Medical Center for their “Adopt A Family”' program. Each department at Holyoke Medical Center “adopts” a family for the holiday and buys gifts off a provided wishlist.
“They provide these incredible gifts to the families so that they can ensure the holiday is going to be a happy season for them,” said Cavanaugh.
This program has about 35 families that participate, which Cavanaugh said helps provide gifts to a little over 100 kids in total.
For the upcoming months, Cavanaugh said she is most excited to be able to continue to serve the youth and families and provide them with some holiday magic.
“I’m really happy that we’re open and we’re trying to resume operations as much as possible. I’m also really excited because, the reality is, the kids get excited during the holidays and I hope to be able to continue to work with community partners so that we can provide the happiest holiday for all of those kids. It’s been a really tough year and a half for them and I think that if we can continue to provide services and opportunities for them then it’s going to be a good holiday,” she said.
With COVID-19 capacity limits and protocols still in place, the Holyoke Boys and Girls Club currently has a waitlist for their after-school program. However, Cavanaugh said that this waitlist does move quickly.
“The waitlist does move though and so, initially, we may not be able to serve the family right away, but hopefully we typically can pull off within a week or two depending on what our group sizes are and the age of the child and things like that,” she said.
The club is also accepting new members to their teen program on a rolling admission. Those interested in learning more or signing their child up are encouraged to visit their website at https://www.hbgc.org/ or call 534-7366 to speak with Director of Operations Ann Mann.
The Holyoke Boys and Girls Club also relies heavily on donations to keep their services up and running. Donations can be made online, over the phone or in-person at the club. Cavanaugh said that any support helps.
“We rely very heavily on donations. That’s actually how we operate, so it is through the generosity of our community that we’re able to serve our youth and families,” she said. “However little or big, it doesn’t matter. Everything has an impact. Every dollar that comes into this organization has an impact.”