A Letter from the CEO...

Greetings and Happy New Year!

I hope each and every one of you had a wonderful and blessed holiday season!

Over the past several weeks, we have spent a fair amount of time to reflect on the many accomplishments and advancements for our Club. Throughout the year, we have been faced with many challenges, some more challenging than others, but each one of them have helped our team and our family grow stronger. We have also had the opportunity to celebrate many accomplishments over the year. A few of these accomplishments include; taking our local Youth of the Year winner, Yasimine Hamilton to Springfield to visit the State Capitol, being recognized by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America for Outstanding Program of the Year for our Impact Volunteer Program, receiving the Excellence in Mentoring Award from the 100 Black Men of Central Illinois, and Boys & Girls Clubs of America recognized our Board of Directors for their outstanding leadership and commitment to youth with the Gold Level, League of EAGLES award. We were also honored to join Dodie Dunson, our Director of Family Engagement, and his wife, Jaci, when Mayor Koos, surprised him with the Town of Normal Citizen of the Year award, for the amazing things he has done for our community.   

We are truly humbled and greatly appreciate receiving these honors. However, there are two accomplishments of which we are most proud. In September, the City of Bloomington, City Council, unanimously approved our partnership to purchase land at Sunnyside Park which will be the future home of a new Boys & Girls Club for our community. In addition, we have built a partnership with First Christian Church of Bloomington, which is now a chartered Unit of the Boys & Girls Club of Bloomington-Normal, for our Teen CLUB. These accomplishments have allowed us the opportunity to open our doors and provide a safe, fun and supportive place for more youth in our community to come after school and in the Summer.     

Thank you to each of these organizations for the recognition, but most importantly thank all of you for joining us in our mission “to empower all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.” We cannot thank our community enough. Without the support of our Board of Directors, our Community Advisory Council, our staff, our volunteers, our families and our amazing community, we could not have accomplished these amazing things on our own.

We have established our goals for the new year and are focused on strengthening our organization in preparation for growth. We are still in the planning stages for our Comprehensive Campaign and look forward to sharing this exciting information with the community soon. While working towards are vision, we will continue to focus on making sure our members and their safety remain our #1 priority.

We are excited for all of the amazing things 2020 will bring. We hope that you will join us in our vision, to provide a community where every young person has an opportunity for a great future!

 

I CARE,

Tony Morstatter

CEO