Resiliency Initiatives Addressing Learning Loss and Mental Health Are Key For Our Youth
Events in 2020, including the pandemic and racial unrest, have led many young people to feel disenfranchised, powerless, and disconnected from their communities. Additionally, in K-12 education we are seeing significant learning loss and mental health and well-being issues that are further driving existing inequities and disparities as the pandemic continues.

At Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston (BGCGH), we have seen the profound effects of learning loss and the mental health repercussions of the pandemic among our Club members, mostly from communities of color, who are behind academically.
The pandemic required us to rethink how to serve youth, incorporating a relief strategy with stages:
  • First stage, response, we focused on the urgent and immediate needs of Club members and their families, including food insecurity and childcare for essential workers.

  • Second stage, recovery, offering safe programming and beginning the long process of helping members cope with the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Third stage, and where we are currently, resiliency, where we build on recovery efforts by addressing learning loss and trauma.
BGCGH partnered with The Hackett Center for Mental Health to convene a Blue Ribbon Panel. The Panel, a brain trust of regional leaders in education, mental health, philanthropy, and workforce development, studied issues of inequity and disparity in our region.
This culminated in an eye-opening report, Fostering Resiliency in a Post-Pandemic World, which details the impact of COVID-19 among youth in the Houston area and provides recommendations on resiliency programming for our Clubs. We are currently moving forward with many of these recommendations that are enhancing, not replacing, current approaches at BGCGH.

Recently, Marcellina Melvin, Deputy Director, The Hackett Center for Mental Health and I co-authored an op-ed on this topic that was published in the Houston
Business Journal. Click here to read the full op-ed.

Data shows mental health and academic performance are strongly linked and action must be taken to improve outcomes. At BGCGH, we will continue to do whatever it takes to build resiliency and mitigate pandemic learning loss in youth.
For all youth,
Kevin R. Hattery
President & CEO
Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston
Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston
We don't do just one thing, we do whatever it takes to build GREAT futures for kids!
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