By David Crowder, Boys & Girls Club

This Thanksgiving of 2010 marks a pivotal year for the Boys & Girls Club of Frazier Mountain. The four-year-old club is thankful for many blessings this season.

This year the club strengthened its commitment to serve the youth in our community by forming a relationship with Frazier Park Assembly of God for use of their facilities. We are now very close to Frazier Park Elementary School.

We held our first annual Heart of the Mountain Wine and Art fundraiser (sponsored by Tejon Ranch and Tejon Mountain Village) and the community helped raise $20,000 to benefit the children in the program.

The all-volunteer Name Your Price Thrift Store continues to assist many families by allowing them to shop and pay what they can afford for clothes, furniture, games, housewares, books and toys while providing a source of revenue for the club.

And of course we saw children’s lives changed by the care they receive and the interaction and tutoring they enjoy after school at the club.

The Boys & Girls Club’s programs provide much more than quality supervision at an affordable cost; character building and enrichment opportunities are recurrent themes in every core program. Activities include homework assistance, computer education, photography, sports, life skills and much more.

With most parents working to make ends meet, and with a rise in single-parent households, there is less time for parents to teach social skills and positive life choices. Our programs address these issues by offering daily activities and classes taught by positive adult role models in a nurturing environment.

The Frazier Mountain club is one of the 39 Boys & Girls Clubs of Kern County and a member of Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Tax-deductible donations constitute the majority of the club’s funding. Your donations allow the club to sponsor full or partial scholarships for the families who have the greatest need.

To enroll your children in the Boys & Girls Club, please call Kristina Graves at 661-245-2678. Donations can be sent to the club at P.O. Box 1902, Frazier Park, CA 93225. For more information, or to donate online, see www.bgclubsofkerncounty.org.

This is part of the November 26, 2010 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

Have an opinion on this matter? We'd like to hear from you.