Boys & Girls Clubs Are $500,000 Richer

The computer lab at the Boys & Girls Club in east Ventura is a mess. Disemboweled computers are spread around a table in a heap of jumbled wires, their lifeless monitors face up to the ceiling.

All that is about to change, after Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) presented checks of $100,000 each Tuesday to the Ventura club and four others around the county to improve services to children.

Gallegly, who is being opposed for reelection by Democrat Michael Case, obtained the money from the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. How did he do it?

“I asked for it and got it,” he said.

Other clubs receiving money are those in Simi Valley, Moorpark, Camarillo and the Santa Clara Valley.

The funds, which the national organization got through a Bureau of Justice Administration grant to reduce crime among youth, will be used for matters from new computers to expanding programs for middle school students, organizers said.

For the cash-strapped Boys & Girls Clubs, the money was almost too good to believe.

“I’ve been holding the check all day, running around the lobby,” said Linda White, executive director of the Boys & Girls Club in Simi Valley.

“We do have a deficit, and this will certainly allow us to continue the programs we’re doing,” she said.

Gallegly’s relationship with the national arm of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America grew out of his fund-raising efforts last year on behalf of Oxnard’s Boys & Girls Club, said the congressman’s press secretary, Tom Pfeifer.

It was then that Gallegly got to know Robby Calloway, one of the national organization’s top officials, and eventually began asking for more funds.

“He really deserves the kudos for this one,” White said. “Politicians do have the ability to put the pressure on people who spend money. He put the pressure on the national organization.”

Gallegly’s ties to the organization go back to his early days in Simi Valley city government in the 1970s, when the club was known only as the Boys Club and occupied a trailer containing a Ping-Pong table on Los Angeles Avenue.

At east Ventura’s Boys & Girls Club, known as the Bill LeSevre Center, officials will use the money to tear down a wall between the computer lab and a room where children get help with their homework after school. New computers will replace the old ones. Staff will be hired to oversee a technology and career resource center.

About eight elementary schoolchildren studying in the small room next to the computer lab were delighted at the prospect of new technology.

Asked, “Who wants a new computer lab?” nearly all raised their hands.

“It would be more fun,” said Devon Blackledge, 8, a second-grader at Poinsettia Elementary School. “Everyone’s always on the games and you always have to wait for a long line.”

The Boys & Girls Club of Ventura will build a similar technology center at its Addison Center on North Olive Street, as well as expanding sports, art and ecology programs, Executive Director Jane Goldschmidt said.

Even in the newest facilities, the money will be useful--to cover deficits, reach more kids and continue serving the children who stream through the doors each week.

The Simi Valley Boys & Girls Club will use the funds to expand programs for teenagers at its new facility on Lemon Drive, White said, adding that the club may also purchase a new van.

The Boys & Girls Club of the Santa Clara Valley will use the funds for career and computer labs at its Fillmore and Santa Paula facilities, Executive Director Pat Zwagerman said.

“They’re there to create an environment where the kids can establish goals and learn how to be successful in school,” she said.

Executive Director Scott Mosher of Moorpark said the funding could buy items from computers to Foosball tables.

Representatives of the Camarillo Boys & Girls Club were unavailable.