The Boys and Girls Club of Dane County celebrated 25 exceptional individuals and organizations that have significantly contributed to its mission over the past 25 years at a special event at the Overture Center in downtown Madison on Nov. 1.
“The Boys and Girls Club of Dane County has been helping our community and our kids for 25 years, so we decided that it was time that we recognized all the people who over those 25 years had contributed significantly for us to be able to do the things that we do,” Sal Carranza, the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County board chair, tells Madison365.
Carranza adds that it was a special night and “a very touching event.”
“We were able to honor a great diversity of people that night — community members who had volunteered for years, staff who had done a lot of work beyond what they needed to do, donors, volunteers, and board members who have supported what we do,” Carranza said. “It was a very important night and way overdue.”
A special committee came together to choose 25 trailblazers from all walks of life including donors, volunteers, staff, and community members as the BGCDC continued to celebrate its year-long celebration of its 25th anniversary.
“It was a night of celebration, a night to honor these trailblazers’ contributions to Boys and Girls Clubs and to thank them for all the work they’ve done to help kids in this community,” Boys and Girls Club of Dane County CEO Michael Johnson tells Madison365.
This event honored trailblazers that included Foley & Lardner, Olson Toon Landscaping, John and Jo Ellen McKenzie, Langston Evans, Madison Area Builders Association, Renee Moe, Tim and Kevin Metcalfe, City of Madison, Black Men Coalition of Dane County, Meicher Family, Mike Dillis, Corey Chambas, Mary Burke, Jackie Hunt, Julian Walters, Denzel Love, Sheikh Jammeh, Tiffany Loomis, Dwayne and Tia Malone, James Blilie, Dave Endres, Paul Tonneson, Corinda Rainey-Moore, and Andy Potts.
The trailblazers were able to give a little speech after Boys and Girls Club of Dane County CEO Michael Johnson introduced them to the crowd and explained why they were selected. Carranza presented the trailblazers with their awards and posed for photos with them.
The crowd at the event also got to hear three heartfelt speeches from Youth of the Year speakers including Bilio Fobate, a senior at Vel Phillip Memorial; Evan Johnson, a senior at La Follette High School; and Patrick Poshi Kahite, a senior at Vel Phillips Memorial. Denny Love shared the “Alumnit Mission Moment.”
“I told the trailblazers that these young people are an example of how important what you do for the club is. You are changing lives,” Carranza says.
Johnson says that he runs into people who aren’t aware that his organization is only 25 years old.
“We’re celebrating 25 years this year and many people seem to think we’ve been around much longer than that,” Johnson said. “We’ve posted all the Facebook stories of the 25 [trailblazer] people that we recognized. It was from everybody from alumni members like Denny Love, who was a club kid now starring in movies and sitcoms and on Netflix, to community leaders like Jackie Hunt, where all her kids pretty much went through our clubs including one of her sons [Julian Walters] who was also one of the trailblazers, to donors who have really helped Boys and Girls Clubs become the organization it is today.
“So we didn’t want to celebrate 25 years for our organization without honoring the people who helped to this point,” he added.
Johnson stressed that there are so much more than 25 people who have given tremendously to BGCDC over the years including Rev. David Smith, whom they recently honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
“He was the actual person who got the Boys and Girls Clubs incorporated in Dane County back in 1999 so he’s part of that story, too, but we honored him in a different way,” Johnson says.
Johnson has been with BGCDC for 15 of those 25 years and he has helped BGCDC grow exponentially.
“We now have kids in college in 27 states. And we have a whole team that helps our kids graduate from college. We’ve built the largest workforce center in the history of the Boys Girls Club of America. We expanded our services and schools,” Johnson says. “We started at one high school and now we’re in 15 schools across southern Wisconsin. We now provide services in rural areas and have staff that work in schools in Walworth County. We now have a virtual center. We bought a church and opened up the Sun Prairie Club. We just started a preschool program.
“I believe we’re the only club in the United States, out of 5,000 clubs worldwide, that does preschool through college and career completion,” he adds.
As the BGCDC gets toward the end of its year-long celebration of its 25th anniversary, they are getting to the holiday season where they historically do a lot of their fundraising for the kids.
“Every year we do our year-end appeal. Right now, it is one of our biggest indirect fundraisers … it’s our year-end giving. And so you got Giving Tuesday coming up, you got letters that were sent out to about 20,000 people asking folks to contribute to Boys and Girls Clubs, you got our pay-it-forward campaign every year where we take kids on shopping sprees,” Johnson says. “So this is the time of year that we’re asking people to give to the club where the club gives to so many, and that would be my request for those who might read this story: to sponsor a family for a holiday meal or to sponsor a scholarship to support one of our kids to participate in our childcare programs. That’s the type of support we’re looking for right now.”
