Terrell Thomas, surrounded by Boys and Girls Club members, is club site manager at Forest Heights Academy of Excellence. (Credit: Collin Richie)

Thirty years in town. With 11 club sites, new grant money, and an army of jumping children, the Boys and Girls Club of Baton Rouge has plenty to celebrate. For a club whose aim is to serve kids who need them the most, some might be tempted to declare Mission: Accomplished.

Of course, anyone who works for the organization wouldn’t dare to think it.

“I’ll tell you a quick story,” Terrell Thomas said in a phone interview. “We took a kid to a Hornets game, not too long ago. On the way back, he pulled me aside and said he just wanted to say thank you. And I was like ‘You don’t have to thank me...’ and he said, ‘...I’ve never been outside Baton Rouge.’ That was the first time he had been outside the city limits.”

Thomas, club manager at the Forest Heights Academy of Excellence Boys and Girls Club, probably has a million of those stories.

That’s what the Boys and Girls Club does: it opens doors for children. The Boys and Girls Club in Baton Rouge has been opening a lot of doors in its 30 years here.

“You know, kids vote with their feet,” Pat Van Burkleo, president of the Baton Rouge Boys and Girls Club, told me in a phone interview. “If they’re not engaged, and if we’re not meeting them at the level they want to be, and having a good time with them, they’re not going to come to us.”

In 1990, the Baton Rouge Boys and Girls Club – then just the Boys Club – operated out of an old fire station across the street from Winbourne Elementary.

“Back when I started, a good day at the club would be 35-40 kids,” said Burkleo. “Today, our average daily attendance hovers around 1,600 kids, coming every day.”

And that number is daily growing.

“We now...[have] 11 club sites – nine public schools and two BREC park facilities,” Chelsea Laborde, director of communications, said over the phone. “We’re always looking to expand.”

The Boys and Girls Club, which is a congressionally chartered national organization, was formed in 1860. Baton Rouge has had one since 1981.

“Baton Rouge is a terrific, philanthropic community,” said Van Burkleo. “Thirty-two years ago, a group of business people got together because they wanted a [club]. They saw a need, and they saw a solution.”

The organization consists mainly of after-school programs that keep kids engaged academically.

“We are very focused on academics,” said Laborde. “They all do their homework at the Boys and Girls club after school. Otherwise, they might not do their homework at all.”

But academics are only one component of what Van Burkleo described as the “club experience;” the organization also focuses on self-exploration, recognition, and (of course) fun.

“When [the kids] walk in the door, they can reinvent themselves,” explained Van Burkleo. “They don’t have to be the bad kid in the back of the classroom who doesn’t understand what’s going on in math class so he acts out.”

“We try to take that kid and introduce him to math in different and new ways, or we try to find a niche that he succeeds at.”

Van Burkleo emphasized that given the obstacles these youth face – poverty, broken homes, fractured communities, underperforming schools were just a few that he mentioned – recognition can go a long way.

“We think that recognition is a real important aspect to Boys and Girls Club,” he said. “Catching kids when they’re doing good things, instead of catching them when they’re doing bad things...so, what we have to do is provide interesting, engaging and fun activities that gets kids involved in a connection,” he said. “We think that, by having a connection with the Boys and Girls Club, with our staff [and] with our volunteers, we start setting higher expectations. We really think kids rise to that occasion.”

The newest occasion for the kids to rise involves setting a world record. Today (March 23), at 5 p.m., boys and girls from across the world will participate in two minutes of jumping jacks, in an attempt to reach the Guinness Book of World Records, as part of the festivities for the national Boys and Girls Club week.

Thomas, when he told me of the event, seemed almost as excited as the kids were.

“You know everybody says the youth is our future,” he said. “I truly believe it, and see it every single day. I just enjoy what I do.”