Basketball, yoga and cooking: These are some of the programs the Boys and Girls Club of Durham and Orange Counties hopes to support with funds from its Blue Door Breakfast.
“(The Boys and Girls Club) is a place where kids can go after school,” said Doug Perry, a Public Allies AmeriCorps apprentice who works for the club. “Childcare costs are, across the board, exorbitant, and we only charge $10 a year. Kids have told me that they feel safe at our club, and we have great part-time staff. It’s not exactly a school environment, but we’re still pushing educational programming that they’re excited about.”
Kelen Lloyd, who's 9 years old and a member of the BGCDOC, said that her favorite activity was yoga. Mone’t Peaks said that her favorite activity was a competition where they got to make picture tributes to Martin Luther King, Jr.
The breakfast was held at the Carolina Inn on Friday morning, and tickets were $60 per person. Guests were seated at round tables, where they could chat with kids from the BGCDOC. The Chapel Hill Police Department Chief Chris Blue and representatives from the offices of various local politicians attended.
CEO of the BGCDOC Jerome Levisy kicked off the breakfast with a review of the club, and what much of the money raised would go toward: a new facility.
“The Corporate Board of Directors and staff have started a process to relocate the facility that is in Durham,” Levisy said. “We were engaged in conversation with GoTriangle over the light rail project, and as you can imagine, dealing with federal dollars, the project has run into its roadblocks. But it is full speed ahead, no pun intended. It is coming. The Monday after Thanksgiving, they will park some heavy duty equipment on our Boys and Girls Club, right on Pettigrew Street, because, no pun intended, you can’t stop a train.”
Levisy then introduced Cheryl Crisp-Parquet, director of community and diversity engagement at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, who presented the BGCDOC with a $500,000 check to applause and cheers — and, in Levisy’s case, tears.
Levisy took a few moments to compose himself, then returned to the podium and introduced keynote speaker Robbie Bach, former chief Xbox officer at Microsoft and current member of the BGC’s National Board of Governors.
Bach, a UNC graduate, talked about his involvement with the Boys and Girls Club, which started when his wife signed his son up for the Club’s basketball team. After he left Microsoft, Bach said he decided to move into what he dubbed civic engineering, helping to transform communities — a goal that includes working with the Boys and Girls Club.
