Nonprofit News is a monthly Gazette publication featuring stories submitted by nonprofit organizations and individuals in the Pikes Peak region. Submit content and events for consideration to nonprofitnews@gazettedev.gazette.com.

Boys & Girls Club of the Pikes Peak Region offers more than 30 national programs within five core areas: education and career development, character and leadership development, the arts, health and life skills, and sports, fitness and recreation. One local staff member shares his story:

I guess the best way to explain the purpose of The Boys & Girls Club of the Pikes Peak Region is to share my own “why” – why I started volunteering, why I decided to join the staff, why I couldn’t leave my heart and my emotions out of the work.

It’s easy to look at children and see nothing but, children, really. They’re everywhere: whining in the store, tugged hopelessly along by sleep-deprived parents who fantasize the hooligans will grow exhausted and go straight to bed soon as soon as they get home – knowing it’s wishful thinking. You see them running off to the bus stop, bustling with laughter about who knows what, on the playgrounds, corralling around the monkey bars, in the sand pits intensely creating, what seems, simple piles of sand.

We see them, but we don’t really see them, just as we really don’t see people around us, not deeply, as each of us deserves to be seen. Children are often invisible, though each one has a story, a past, a view of the world as it is, and scars. What ails you certainly ails them; and just like you, they have no idea how to deal with it. This loneliness can crowd us even when surrounded by people who care, or – a harsh reality for some – when we realize no one wants to help.

So often, as a boy, I wanted to be known by and valuable to someone. Now, as a man, these same thoughts and feelings come, and I go to the Club and remember I’m not the only one who feels this way. I’ve found that as I choose to be vulnerable with the kids and help them work through their issues, I’ve had to confront my own areas of weakness, learning to accept I won’t always be right.

Many of my kids’ truths are harsher than mine. They are sons of gang violence, daughters of addiction and destitution, children who wander in search of a family for warmth that’s deeper than the covers can give. At the Club, we give those children a voice, a platform to tell the world their stories. The staff at the Boys & Girls Club care, and are the people who stick around throughout their lives. We’re not going to abandon them or let them feel alone, degraded or worthless. They mean the world to us, each knob-shaped head, toothy grin and play-dirty shoes that walk through our doors. 

This is who we are and why we stay at the Boys & Girls Club. It’s impossible for this to be just a job, this is a family. It’s a place where all of us belong, and believe that we’re all worth fighting for.