Today
Today the Boys & Girls Clubs of Manatee County serve nearly 2300 young people, ages 6-17 at its five locations.
Today
Today, Boys & Girls Clubs of America is the premier youth organization in the country with more than 4,000 Clubs serving
4.8 million girls and boys throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and on military bases around the world.
Our History
The Boys Clubs of Manatee County, under the guidance of the Kiwanis Club of Bradenton, interested individuals, and other civic groups, began operation in February 1946 as an affiliated member of Boys Clubs of America, in a frame wooden building which had been used as a field house for major league baseball teams training in Bradenton. The old Boston Braves continued to use the building as a dressing room during spring training for several years after the Boys Club obtained the property. The Boys Club became a member of the Manatee County Community Chest in 1946. In 1951 the Kiwanis Club of Bradenton constructed the gymnasium at a cost of $80,000 equipped.
In 1957 the people of Palmetto cooperated with the Boys Club of Manatee County in extending the program north of the Manatee River. A baseball program was launched in the summer and in November 1960 the Palmetto Branch began its full-time operation in a small frame building, which was acquired from the First Methodist Church of Bradenton.
In April of 1963, the area of operation more than tripled when the Board of Directors acquired a building from the Veterans of Foreign Wars. In April of 1970, a capital fund campaign for the construction of a new Boys Club building was conducted. The new Palmetto Boys Club building was completed in March of 1971.
The Bayshore Branch opened its doors on July 19, 1965 in a loaned store located in the Bayshore Gardens Shopping Center in south Manatee County. Following a capital fund drive, the new facilities for this branch were dedicated in May 1968 with the name changed to the DeSoto Boys Club. The Building Expansion Program was completed in September of 1978.
In 1992 the organization made a major change by opening membership to girls and changing the name to Boys & Girls Clubs of Manatee County. This necessitated staffing adjustments and some facility renovation.
In April 1998 in East Bradenton at the Page Housing Project a fourth Boys & Girls Club opened for the children in that area.
An opportunity to provide Boys & Girls Club activities in the Pride Park area came to light in the summer of 2002. With a grant from the John S. and James. L Knight Foundation, the Harllee Boys & Girls Club is open before and after school in the Sara Scott Harllee Middle School. Currently, 71% of the middle school students enrolled are club members.
In October 2007 the Boys & Girls Clubs of Manatee County received a grant from Manatee Country Children's Services Board to begin operating an after school program at Southeast High School. On December 19, 2007 The Club at Southeast High School became our sixth club.
Today the Boys & Girls Clubs of Manatee County serves over 2,500 young people, ages 6-17.
History of the Boys & Girls Club Movement
Throughout the early months of 1906, a group of businessmen, industrialists, and Boys’ Club workers held a series of meetings to determine the feasibility of forming a national federation. Their dream of a unified Movement resulted in the birth of Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
“A meeting was held yesterday at the rooms of the Twentieth Century Club on Joy Street, which was attended by representatives of various Boys’ Clubs, who ratified the report of a previous committee providing for a national federation of Boys’ Clubs.” The Boston Globe, June 23, 1906.
Representatives from a number of the 53 Boys’ Clubs then in existence attended that meeting, which resulted in the birth of what today is know as Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Most of the Clubs represented were clustered in the New England area, but there were also Clubs in such faraway places as Iowa, Alabama, and even California. The history of their origins dates back a half-century before the national organization was founded.
THE EARLY DAYS
The start of Boys’ Clubs can be traced back to the mid-1800s in the industrial cities of the Northeast. The earliest Club-like facility on record was established in 1853 in New York City. It was only a room connected to the sleeping quarters of a lodging house for newsboys, but it provided some comfort and was a refuge from the cold and grimy streets of New York. In 1860 came the first effort to provide structured, daily, out-of-school activities for disadvantaged boys with the founding of the Dashaway Club in Hartford, Connecticut.
Similar organizations soon began appearing in New England: Providence, Rhode Island in 1868; Salem Massachusetts in 1869; New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1870; and New Haven, Connecticut in 1871.
The Movement soon began spreading out from the Northeast. In 1887, the Milwaukee Boys’ Club introduced the idea to the growing industrial areas of the Midwest. And the Boys’ Club of Colorado Springs brought it further west just one year later.
By the end of the 1890s, the Boys’ Club Movement extended from coast-to-coast. The San Francisco Boys’ Club, founded in 1891, and the Columbia Park Boys’ Club, founded in 1894, had paved the way.
A significant event for the Movement was the opening of the Boys’ Club of Fall River, Massachusetts in 1897 – the first organization to have a new building erected specifically as a Boys’ Club.
By 1900, 37 Club organizations were in full operation.
In 1903, the Movement spread south of the Mason-Dixon line. New Clubs in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1903, and in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1904 made Boys’ Clubs a truly national Movement.
BY 1906, 53 Club organizations were in full operation. For some years their representatives had met occasionally to discuss programs and problems. But they recognized the need for a closer relationship with one another and for organized leadership to develop the Movement.
A NATIONAL ORGANIZATON
The organizational efforts which took place in Boston that spring of 1906 led to the formal incorporation of Federated Boys’ Clubs the following August. Famed social worker Jacob Riis was elected as the first president, and the federation’s purpose was declared: to act as headquarters for all existing Clubs, keep records, conduct conferences, advise Clubs, secure and train workers, help establish new Clubs, and extend the knowledge of this important field of social work throughout the country.
With the establishment of the national organization, the Movement continued to grow. In 1915, the name Federated Boys’ Clubs was changed to the Boys’ Club Federation, which included allied organizations in Canada, Australia, Holland, New Zealand, India and the British Isles.
In 1929, the name of the organization was changed to Boys’ Club Federation of America, to distinguish if from like-named foreign organizations. In 1931 the word Federation was dropped and the name became Boys’ Clubs of America.
In 1956, the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the national organization, application was made to Congress for a congressional charter, which was granted. In 1990 the organization changed its name to Boys & Girls Clubs of America and officially admitted girls into membership.
The Movement has grown tremendously since that first official meeting in 1906. Today, Boys & Girls Clubs of America is the premier youth organization in the country with more than 4,000 Clubs serving 4.8 million girls and boys throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and on military bases around the world.
