GROUP MEMBERS:

Erin Bolender
Sarah Chhim
Megan Dow
Lauren Marty

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Our group worked with the Bellingham Boys & Girls Club (B&GC) to help increase community awareness of the club and the opportunities it offered-most specifically that the club is about more than athletics. We met with Linda Tyler, the branch director of the Bellingham club, and brainstormed possible ideas for our social change project. Originally our group had hoped to work directly with the kids, but our plans changed according to the needs of the club.

Linda informed us that the Bellingham club had been talking about putting together information sheets and/or a brochure that would be available to potential club members, their parents, and the community; that would inform them of all of the available programs the Bellingham club offers. Along with the information sheets and the brochure, we also elected to create a visually appealing PowerPoint presentation that would run during the Bellingham club’s Annual Donor Breakfast (all of the club donors throughout Whatcom County are invited every year to a breakfast where they hear about the latest goings on of the club and its members).

The idea behind the PowerPoint was to create awareness of the variety of activities offered at the club as a means of getting beyond the “athletics only” perception of the club. During our meetings with Linda we were given an example of an information sheet the Blaine club had created as a reference point for our information sheets. Linda also provided us with information about the club and the programs and services it offers.

All of the documents we created included three major aspects of the B&GC as well as the hours of operation, the location, and contact information of the Bellingham Club. The three major points included in all three documents were: the six “core programs,” the “youth development strategy” and the mission statement of the B&GC. The B&GC has created six core program groups that focus on the most beneficial aspects of youth growth and development.

These core programs are: Health and Life Skills, The Arts, Sports, Fitness and Recreation, Education and Career Development, Technology, and Character and Leadership Development. Each of these core programs is designed to focus on a specific aspect of youth development highlighting the benefits of each. The youth development strategy developed by the B&GC consists of an acronym: BUICK. This strategy was designed to foster the positive development of all members. BUICK creates a sense of belonging, usefulness, power and influence, competence, and then Kids!

After compiling all of this information we set to work on creating the desired documents in the most beneficial way. We broke the six core programs up among our four members and set about putting together information for our individual programs. Our first task was to design the PowerPoint presentation which needed to be completed by November 9, 2006. We took all of our individual information and compiled it into one presentation that contained basic information on the six core programs (what activities were offered in each and what they were designed to do) and pictures of kids from the Bellingham Club participating in various activities. We submitted this presentation to Linda for her final approval and received great feedback from our work. The presentation ran throughout the breakfast and was seen by all those in attendance.

Next we created more in depth information sheets for the individual programs that had all of the activities offered by the Bellingham Club for each core program along with a description of each activity on the front page. The back page had the mission statement of the B&GC, BUICK, the hours of operation, location, and contact information of the club, as well as pictures of members participating in corresponding activities. The brochure was similar to the PowerPoint in that it has only minimal amounts of detailed information and is full of pictures of the kids. Overall, our group is very satisfied with the outcomes of this project. Not only did we fulfill the agreements set forth in our social contract with Linda, we were also able to use the skills we have learned in the Business school to create marketing material for the Bellingham B&GC.