Newsletter

Executive Director's Message

It seems hard to believe that it has been more than six years since we opened the Raymond P. Lavietes Unit of the Boys & Girls Clubs of The Lower Naugatuck Valley. It was such a huge undertaking with so many unknown obstacles. Would children come? Could we staff such a large facility? How were we going to fund an operation with such a huge overhead?

The answers came quickly and so did the children. The Board worked extremely hard to grow the staff and raise the funds to operate a first class Boys & Girls Club and, in the end, we may have become a victim of our own success. With every program and bus run filled to capacity, there were still waiting lists... children who wanted and needed to come to the Club ... but there was no room.

That is why the Ansonia project is so critical to the children of the Valley. It is not that we want to grow, but that we need to grow. There are literally thousands of children in our community that have nothing to do, no place to go, no one to watch them after school and, as national statistics demonstrate, 90% of all juvenile delinquencies occur between 3.00 pm and 8.00 pm each day.

I want to thank the Administration in Ansonia for recognizing this need and for all their support throughout this entire process. Without their support, the Ansonia Boys & Girls Club would only be a dream.

I especially want to thank Bill Miller, Jr. and the entire board for their leadership these past two years, through this most difficult and tedious process. The fruits of their labor are in the not too distant future, and the children are waiting.

Jack Ribas

Executive Director