FLANDREAU, S.D. (KELO) — With the help of students from Dakota State University, members of the Boys & Girls Club of Moody County in Flandreau were building something.
“They are creating their own robots right now,” unit director Keilani Klimczuk said April 16, describing the scene that afternoon at the club. “So, you’re using a Red Solo Cup, and there are markers, and so by the end their robot will be able to walk on their markers.”
Klimczuk manages the club, and it’s a role she thoroughly enjoys.
“I love my job,” Klimczuk said. “I wouldn’t rather do anything else.”
Around 150 kids are a part of the program, but that number will double in the summer. Kids in junior kindergarten to the 12th grade can be members.
“My kids love coming here,” Jason Taylor of Flandreau said.
Taylor has two kids, an 11-year-old and an 8-year-old, who regularly spend time at the club.
Santella: So if this place didn’t exist, where would they go after school?
“Oh, we have no idea,” Taylor said.
Both he and his wife work full-time.
“We had a terrific day care in town here, but going from day care costs to what it costs to send the kid to sign up for the club, it’s just night and day,” Taylor said.
The cost to be a member of the Boys & Girls Club of Moody County is $100 per year, per child. But the doors are always open, regardless of a family’s ability to pay.
“We never turn a child away if they cannot afford the fee or the services,” said Jody Hernandez, who serves as CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Plains.
Furthermore, as Hernandez explains, they work to have no waiting list.
“We work with our partners to make that happen,” Hernandez said. “We work closely with SDSU to get students and bring students from Brookings here to help work our club so we have enough staff here so we can serve more children.”
The club in Flandreau will soon enjoy a larger space. And May brings a groundbreaking for a new Boys & Girls Club facility just steps away: an “early learning center” with the potential to serve around 150 kids from birth to five years old.
“We came to that facility and its footprint and what we needed after receiving money from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, and we went through a whole needs assessment,” Hernandez said.
Conversations at the club highlight the value of community. Dakota Layers, which raises chickens and sells eggs, is based out of Flandreau. Jason Unger, who serves as corporate counsel for them, says their financial support for the Boys & Girls Club in the community has been substantial.
“The programming is incredible at an incredible cost,” Unger said. “Again, the way we make that work is by community participation and involvement, which luckily for us, I guess, is that’s been a priority for a lot of our community.”
“It’s a very protective community and a very giving community,” Klimczuk said.
“The parents that use it, the people that use it, they all are very thankful for it,” Taylor said.
After all, what’s good for family and their kids today is primed to pay dividends down the road.
“These are the community’s future leaders, and we’re hoping that everything that we’re teaching them will just make the community better,” Klimczuk said.
The Boys & Girls Club of Moody County is part of the Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Plains, which has 19 total sites across five different communities. The new early learning center in Flandreau will make 20.
