THUNDER BAY -- The Boys & Girls Club is looking to expand its programming in the neighbourhood where it all began.
The group's executive director Albert Aiello said it could easily increase its St. Jude Catholic Elementary School after school program that has "absolutely exploded" from its current 60 students operating two days per week to at least 90 over three days.
"I don't think we'll have a problem doing the extra 50 per cent," Aiello said. "Every time we expand, we have to take it very cautiously because we don't have funding to do all that kind of stuff. Every time we start something, we don't end it. It becomes permanent."
The local Boys & Girls Club began decades of providing nutrition and safe places for youth in the East End in 1971.
"We've never actually left the East End. We've always been there in some capacity," Aiello said.
"There is a great need in the St. Jude area -- the Ogden/East End area. We're looking to expand that to three or four days a week just based on the numbers. We have a boys and a girls group and they're both maxed out at 30. That's pretty much all we could really accommodate there so we're looking to possibly add extra days to accommodate the younger kids in particular."
Last year alone, the Boys & Girls Club was responsible for feeding children 121,578 meals, 85,769 of which were part of breakfast programs at eight schools across the city.
Aiello recalled a multi-generational survey the club conducted in 2000, which showed above all the food and programming, the fondest memory past members hold is having had a safe place to be when school let out.
"To most peoples surprise, it was something as simple as saying, 'I had a place to go,'" he said.
"What we do isn't brain surgery, it's pretty simple. But it's doing those little things consistently over a long period of time is really what touches a child and has lasting impressions on them."
A combination of municipal taxes and the Thunder Bay District Social Services Administration Board levy funds nine per cent of the Boys and Girls Club's annual budget.
