Stuart - Saturday March 25, 2023: Community leaders will gather to celebrate a major milestone in the nearly five-year journey by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Martin County (BGCMC) to bring a flagship facility to one of the region’s areas of greatest need.
At 4 p.m. March 28, BGCMC will host a groundbreaking ceremony on property at Southeast High School Avenue, right behind Stuart Middle School, at 575 S.E. Georgia Ave. in Stuart.
“As great as it is to celebrate the groundbreaking, we’re focused on getting to the ribbon cutting,” says Keith “Fletch” Fletcher, president and CEO of BGCMC. “We’re eager to establish a facility with the size and resources to assist the City of Stuart, local nonprofits and faith-based partners in helping make a positive difference in the lives of local children and families across the area but specifically in East Stuart.”
BGCMC sought a partnership with the Martin County School District on the property to ensure easy access from neighboring Stuart Middle School—where 45 percent of the students are classified as low income—and nearby East Stuart, where 30 percent of youth reportedly live in poverty with annual family incomes less than $15,000.
The result of a nearly $17 million capital project supported by generous philanthropists, business leaders and the community at large, the new facility will mark BGCMC’s fifth club and will serve as many as 500 local kids per day.
BGMCM currently works with many of the kids in the East Stuart area, providing transportation to take members to and from its Palm City Club. The centrality of the new facility—and its abundance of exciting features and programs—aims to appeal to an even wider group of young people.
Spanning 38,000-square-feet on 3.5 acres, the new facility will feature a 7,000-square-foot full-sized gym with two indoor basketball courts, kitchen, dining area, recording studio, classrooms—all traditional features at BGCMC club—as well as 15,000-square-feet of workforce labs equipped with materials and technologies to train club members to earn certifications in HVAC, welding, carpentry, electrical, plumbing, computer coding, drone piloting, spatial-reality and so much more.
Kids in the community who join the new club will enjoy its benefits and programs for free—as is the case with all BGCMC members. Even if they’re not members, many kids in the area and across Martin County know the community commitment and culture of BGCMC.
That’s because its AmeriCorps mentors already serve in local elementary and middle schools to help struggling students. Such involvement makes a measurable difference. At nearby J.D. Parker Elementary—where 100 percent of students are considered low income and qualify for free and reduced lunch and test scores consistently fare poorly—students mentored by AmeriCorps members recorded a 79 percent increase in reading, math and science in the 2021/2022 school year.
Even now, BGCMC—which counts more than 500 children among its members and serves nearly 6,000 more in its outreach programs—is shaping the future workforce with its acclaimed culinary program. Club members as young as elementary- and middle-school- age learn kitchen and sanitation skills and even help operate a food truck enterprise in which they manage every facet—menu creation, food prep, cooking, catering, serving, marketing—except driving the truck.
With curriculum and instruction overseen by certified teachers, the workforce programs at the incoming club will also rely on partnerships with local business leaders. This ensures a level of training that goes beyond the textbook and can result in ready employment opportunities, which Fletcher describes as “the original and ongoing purpose of the workforce lab programs.”
The ease of access to such resources in an environment of such need poses the potential to leave both an immediate and lasting legacy of positive change, says Thelma Washington, executive director of the Gertrude Walden Child Care Center who’s dedicated nearly four decades to working for the betterment of East Stuart.
“This will help break that generational curse,” says Washington. “They can get out of regular school and go right over, and actually finish up with a skill and step right out and get a job. Not everyone is college material. Not everyone is going to the school of their choice. But they can have a Plan B—and it can turn out to be their Plan A. Every parent wants better for their kids and the Boys and Girls Club is actually offering to help see that it can happen.”