Campaign Committee

For over 30 years, the Boys & Girls Club of Janesville has worked hard to ensure all youth in our community have access to a safe, affordable, and positive environment after school and during the summer. When left alone and unsupervised youth can get into trouble. Our community saw this with last year’s fire at Kohls and this year’s eighth grader’s threat of violence at Marshall Middle School with guns seized at their home.

In 1997, when more youth needed our services, I was a part of the campaign to build our current Club. I am happy to chair the current capital and endowment campaign to build a new facility to serve more youth at the proposed location in the Fourth Ward on S. Jackson Street.

Local youth are the next generation that will lead Janesville, and it is imperative they receive the support to succeed. Life has many obstacles, especially for youth from low-income families with less resources. Like everything that has grown over 30 years, the need to serve more youth and families in Janesville has also grown.

With 49% of 3^rd graders reading below grade level and childcare costs skyrocketing, our services are critical to the community; but we no longer have the space we need. Our waiting list has over 100 youth who need services and those are just the ones we know about. Our members are improving their math and language art grades, learning healthy lifestyles and how to interact with their peers. More youth in the community should have access to these skills and resources.

As community needs grow for affordable childcare, a prepared workforce, and equal educational opportunities, the Club is looking to meet that need by building a larger facility. I have seen the impact of the Club’s mission on many young lives. With the Club’s support, students were able to graduate high school, get an acceptance letter to college, or get a good paying job. With our proposed multi-million-dollar campaign, we will triple the number of youth served, create new jobs, serve nutritional meals to low-income youth in a food desert, prepare the next workforce, and grow community partnerships.

We provide the most affordable after-school and summer programming to ages 6-18. We are currently providing services to over 400 youth, but there are more in our community who still need care. By building a new facility we can triple our impact on local youth.

Janesville has a history of being a very giving and caring community and has always sought to meet the needs of our youngest citizens. I encourage our community to come together again and support this project, so more kids are safe after school, more kids are being mentored, more kids are getting help with homework, and more kids are getting what they need to succeed in life.

Bill Kennedy