Kentuckiana Boys and Girls Clubs Makes Announcement This Week

The Kentuckiana Boys and Girls Clubs organization plans to reopen the closed Newburg club later this month and an announcement is expected sometime this week.The club was run by the Salvation Army, but was among three that were closed last year due to poor funding. Kentuckiana Boys and Girls Clubs has since begun raising funds to reopen the Newburg club. The organization launched a fundraising campaign accepting both business and individual donations and is now just shy of its $500,000 goal, which includes a $100,000 dollar cap off gift from Humana once $400,000 is reached.Kentuckiana has been steadily raising the money but remains a few thousand dollars short according to the figures stated on the organization’s website. Kentuckiana Boys and Girls Clubs now expects to make an announcement about the official reopening of the Newburg club this week, said Jennifer Helgeson, president of Kentuckiana Boys and Girls Club.The club has been operating under shortened holiday hours the past couple weeks, but when it reopens later this month it will be in full force, including two full-time and six-part time staff members. The Newburg club hosted an open house to reintroduce the club to the community in December, which went well, said Helgeson.Over 150 members have already registered to use the club, she said.“I had one parent who literally grabbed me when she walked in the door and said she had been hoping and praying for the day the Newburg club would reopen because she literally had no place for her children to go,” she said.Kentuckiana Boys and Girls Clubs continues to search for funding to open the two former Salvation Army clubs in Parkland and Portland, said Helgeson.“We are still in discussions. We are working with community partners right now to exhaust all efforts at what the next steps would be and what the next club would be that we look to reopen,” she said.Kentuckiana currently provides transportation from those two clubs to its Shawnee club facilities.