The homes in the neighborhood along Ninth Street in Reno east of the El Rancho drive-in theater are old with a mix of domesticity and disregard. There are many unkempt yards, walls with peeling paint and run-down cars in oily, cracked driveways.

On the other side of the street, children run through the doors of a spacious brick building touting color and life. Numerous shuttles sit in the parking lot. Inside there are friendly faces, activities and treats. Boys race around the basketball courts as the girls play on the playground, while other youngsters hover around teen workers. It’s the sort of environment where parents are glad their children are spending their summer free time, among faces that provide a positive influence.

The Boys and Girls Club of Truckee Meadows’ Donald W. Reynolds Facility makes no apology for its beautiful appearance in this neighborhood. In fact, that’s the point.

“This is kid heaven,” said Mike Wurm, executive director of the club. “When our kids walk in the front door, they should not feel like they’re second-class, they should not feel like they’re on a scholarship, they should not feel like they cannot afford a nice facility to be in. The stuff is the draw. If you want to play basketball, you want to work on a computer, you want to play in this building, that’s the draw. … This is a facility for all kids.”

Something for everyone

For Wurm and Lori Thomas, teen services director of the club, the Achilles’ heel of the BGC is publicity — getting the message out to parents and kids that safe alternatives like the BGC exist and that all kids can get plugged into a program.

According to Thomas, the size of the community doesn’t matter. Teens will always find an excuse to say activities are not readily available to them, she said. It’s a product of the socially generated term of “adolescence,” she explained.

“That happened around the ’40s and ’50s when kids were getting off farms and suddenly they didn’t have a role in our society and now their role is to simply be entertained,” she said. “If we can give them a role to play where they are needed and depended on and productive, they will stay in their role and that will help them develop who they are as people and they will become productive.”

Through developing strategies to attract and retain children and teens, Wurm said local BGC participation has increased exponentially in a period of 15 years from 800 to 9,000, with nearly 3,000 teen members.

“We’ve segmented from the old Boys and Girls Club, given them their own space and own identity,” Wurm said of high school students who may attend one of nine satellite centers at places like Hug High School that provide kids a closer place to hang out after school if they can’t make it to the Reynolds facility.

Recent accolades have bolstered the attention to the club’s individual sites and overall program. The Hug teen center recently won a marketing award for the strategies employed by the club to draw kids in and raise funds. Another award the BGC will receive in October is to recognize the work done primarily by teens to hold a cultural heritage event combining Martin Luther King Day with President Barack Obama’s inauguration in which teens created a museum at the main site and put together slideshow presentations and art projects.

Getting the gang kids

The BGC does outreach to many gang-affiliated youth who are at a junction in their lives where their choices are significant. In its way of helping the communitywide issue, the club accepts referrals from social workers for kids sitting on the fence about their gang choices, Wurm said, because it’s important to offer alternatives. Ultimately, it comes down to the ability of the club to keep the interest of those youth and keep them coming.

“One of our first strategies is to get them in a small group,” Thomas said. “There’s a young man who’s part of our Youth Artworks program where the teens are going to do some murals this summer. They’re going out and doing positive things. And quite frankly, he’s still at risk, but he’s gravitating more and more to a sense of belonging and he’s volunteering.”

The club also entices teens by offering summer jobs to appeal to their wallets and their need for approval. The club hires 50 teens who can work four hours a day. The privilege must be earned, however. Teens are screened and tested, learn the skills of putting together a resume, how to dress for work and complete volunteer hours because the positions are competitive, Thomas said.

“I asked this young man if this was his first job interview and I think I saw in his eyes he never thought he’d have a job,” Thomas said. “He’s the kind of kid who sits around unless someone offers him something. … That’s where we see some real life changes.”

But the programs alone aren’t always enough. Sometimes location is crucial for the kids who are flirting with joining a gang, Wurm said, speaking to one of Reno’s most gang-ridden neighborhoods: the area around the intersection of Montello and Oliver streets.

“I think there’s some deep-rooted problems in that particular area that need to be solved before you build too many buildings in there,” Wurm said. "Yeah, if we opened up a Boys and Girls Club or a teen center or a GAP (Gang Alternatives Partnership) in there, things would get better. It would have to because kids would have a place to go and a safe environment. It would create what we’ve created here.”

However, according to Thomas’ discussions with the county’s Regional Gang Unit and other police officers, law enforcement efforts in the Montello area are focusing on the 25-year-olds who are already heavily involved in the gang lifestyle, a demographic that’s too far along for the club to reach.

“How many times have we cleaned up Montello Street?” Wurm said. “How many police chiefs? How many mayors? How many city councilmen have said, ‘We’re cleaning this neighborhood up?’ They come in and do neighborhood watch and do stings down there and get a long list of people arrested and then six months later, we’ve got another councilman saying, ‘I’m going to be the one cleaning up that park.’ I’m not blaming the councilmen. I’m saying those are very deep-rooted problems that are identified. … I know we certainly don’t have an answer to that.”

Public perceptions

Nayely Rodriguez of Sun Valley has nine children, four of whom are still young enough for the BGC. She says she is unable to pay $20 per child for them to join since she lives on welfare and can’t even afford some basic necessities for her sons and daughters.

“I understand for a lot of people, it’s not a lot,” she said. “But for a mom that has nine kids, all of them need shoes, socks, everything, plus school stuff, $20 is a lot of money for me here to come with for four kids here who can’t even join the Boys and Girls Club.”

The Fourth Street Youth Center in Reno used to be the ideal place for her children, but when it closed many free opportunities for a positive influence disappeared. She would like to have a program like that center open in the area.

“It would be really nice and people don't realize what they do to a community when they close places like that down,” she said. “They're like, ‘Whatever, gangs are hardly around.’ They don't know. They try to keep it away from people.”

Chris Martinez, 24, of Reno, has five children and lives within walking distance of the Reynolds facility, but he’s also unable to pay for their recreation. The former gang member used to enjoy the bike club at the Fourth Street Youth Center, but its dissolution put him back on the streets.

“I put all my anger and frustration into my bike and twisting the metal and building the bikes. (I liked) being able to have a role model to show you the way,” he said. “I got pretty into it and as soon as closed, I went right back into where I left off back in the gangs. Then drugs took a big place.”

Tearing down roadblocks

In addition to informing parents about the existence of alternatives, BGC administrators like Wurm and Thomas work hard to provide solutions to cost, transportation and child safety concerns.

“There are good programs here but the kids don’t know where they’re at or can’t access them or can’t afford them,” Wurm said. “Those are roadblocks.”

Such impediments can easily be overcome, Wurm said, as the Boys and Girls Club continually finds connections through its board of directors, a group of men and women in the business community whose purpose is to answer these very questions. One of the board’s primary responsibilities is to keep membership affordable to all youth.

A one-year membership for a teen costs $20. For field trips, however, there may be extra fees. But if circumstances are such that a family cannot afford the $20, a payment plan can be worked out, whether in dollars or in service, Wurm said. If it’s in service, the board’s job is to go out and find sponsors to make up for the fee.

“The payment plan may not include anything about money, but it may mean you come in and help give service back to the club and earn your membership,” Wurm said. “That becomes a key part of our philosophy, which is very simple. If you pay for something, you appreciate it more than if it’s given to you.”

Wurm, who calls the club “too good of a secret,” said many parents walk in, take a look around and walk out without ever asking about cost because they assume they can’t afford it.

“It couldn’t be further from the truth,” Wurm said. “Yes, in the last 10 years, we have had to put some fees on some programs, but we’ve never lost that mission of taking in the kid who can’t afford it. When a parent comes to us and they can’t afford it, even the $20 annual fee, we find a way. We say all the time we’re terrible at business, but we’re great with kids.”

Club staff write grants, approach various foundations and fundraise. Of the funding that comes in, 90 cents of every dollar goes back to the club, Wurm said. But like everyone else in the community, the club has faced its own economic burdens, trying to accomplish its mission with fewer dollars.

“We see an increase in kids and families needing our services but we have less money coming in,” he said. “We have to work to bring in resources to create the Boys and Girls Club.”

Transportation used to be a concern as well, but with a zeal for reaching any and all kids who want to come, the club has pursued several avenues to make itself accessible. The BGC’s growth spurt has meant staff had to figure ways to get kids from point A, which can be home or school, to point B at the club. The Boys and Girls Club started with two vans that traveled to five schools in the Washoe County School District. Since then, the club has acquired four additional vans and bartered a deal with the district to bus students from about 40 schools, servicing all Title I schools based on the highest number of free and reduced lunches, Wurm added.

As another way to keep transportation costs low, the club set up satellite sites at schools such as Hug High and Lois Allen Elementary, providing opportunities for more students to take part in after-school activities.

“Our biggest area of growth has been the teen program,” Wurm said. “Out of 9,000 kids, we have 3,000 teen members. It’s because we’ve been trying to be as responsive as we can be.”

If you tell them, they will come

Parents and teens often find the club too good to be true as they ask about price and the value of services, Thomas said.

“When they start to get involved and see how much we have to offer ... we do get the reaction from kids and the parents very frequently, ‘Are you kidding me? This is too good,’ ” Thomas said. “And we get the question over and over again, ‘Well, how much does it cost if I eat down here?’ And they’re baffled by that. ‘Well, how much does it cost to go to the Reno Aces tomorrow?’ ‘No, it’s free.’ And they’re amazed by that.”

But more than free food and a clean place to hang out, the club also must provide activities to stimulate the teens. Thomas and Wurm contend they have covered that, as well.

“A lot of teen action happens by word of mouth,” Thomas said. “It goes back to that whole ‘gang’ thing. Teens have to be invited; they’re waiting for an invitation to do something. … It’s a matter of whether or not their friends are going to get them to do it. We have to get them out of the building and show them this summer that we’re committed.”

Staff plan a variety of activities and outings for the kids. On Tuesdays, for example, the club takes teens out for Tour Town Tuesday to expose them to various businesses or to city events such as Artown or other venues like the Sparks Heritage Museum. The workers are willing to do whatever it takes to engage young people and guide them to places they wouldn’t find on their own, Thomas said.

Sometimes, Thomas said, life just comes between the youth and the club. The teenage years unlock new freedoms, Wurm said. The BGC begins to compete with other activities kids can choose when they learn to drive and get their own car.

Helping kids with choices

The club will continue to battle many assumptions about its programs, but Wurm and Thomas hope the message spreads that kids do have a place to go and people they can trust.

“We still work on the premise that you have to want to make a positive choice,” Wurm said. “We believe most kids want to make positive choices. But in the absence of positive choices, kids make negative choices.”

Thomas said that at the club, teens can just as easily be a part of a good gang as they can a bad one.

“All the research shows when you’re talking to kids, it’s about belonging,” Thomas said. “Together, we’re finding that the more things we can do in our teen programs to give kids that sense of belonging, the people they’re accountable to, they’re the gang in the old sense of the word.”

Wurm said though the pristine Boys and Girls Club is nice, the greatest asset to the facility is the faces that work there.

“It’s not the building, it’s not the stuff, it’s not the vans, it’s the people who are here when the kids walk through the door because if we don’t have the people, the kids are not coming back,” he said.