Boys & Girls Club Blog

Keystone is the Boys & Girls Club’s ultimate teen program. This unique leadership development experience provides opportunities for young people ages 14 to 18. Youth participate both in and out of the Club in activities in three focus areas: Academic Success, Career Preparation and Community Service.

The members enrolled this year in Keystone have been very busy helping the Club and the local community. This year, Keystone members have worked hard towards their goal of being able to attend the National Keystone Conference held in California this summer. This is the first time the conference has been held in person in two years so the members are very excited about the opportunity to travel!

At the time of writing, Keystone members have a combined total of almost 150 hours of community service! This has come through both acts of service big and small. Making sandwiches for the Hope Fridge is a quick and fun way the members have been helping the community. Another way in which they have volunteered is by helping out at Solutions Recovery. The members spent an afternoon helping clean and set up a childcare room for parents at the center. The coldest and if asked, the members’ most fun volunteer opportunity was helping carry banners in the Oshkosh Holiday Parade! The group even volunteered their time to run the coat closet at both of the WineFeast events this year.

Every year, students in Keystone must complete a service project. This year, the members showed a screening of “Kiss the Ground”, a documentary available on Netflix. The film talks about the importance of the carbon cycle and how we could store carbon in the ground to not only help with global warming but also help reverse desertification through various farming practices. After the showing of the movie, there was a Q&A led by our members so that younger members could better understand the meaning of the documentary. Keystone members then helped other students plant seeds and discuss the best ways in which their new plants will flourish and then finished the night with a treat and a fun game of Kahoot!

An exciting opportunity presented itself this year in the opportunity to bring the keystone programming into the high schools. Once a week, students at both Oshkosh West and North High Schools could sign up to work on some small service projects. These projects included answering questions on freerice.org to send rice to people in need, learning about local volunteer opportunities available to them, helping with research projects on zooniverse.org, and making cards for people during the holiday season.

If you know a high school student that would be interested in getting involved in Keystone please contact me at seanp@bgcosh.org.

Sean Purtee
Director of Teen Services