JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-RANDOLPH, Texas –
Boys and girls who belong to the Torch Club at Joint Base
San Antonio-Randolph Youth Programs have proved it’s never too early in life to
become contributing members of society.
The club, which is affiliated with the Boys & Girls
Clubs of America, focuses on the character development of youth through leadership
opportunities and service to the community.
“The Torch Club is a great way to help young boys and girls
become powerful voices for our society,” said Tania Dunbar, JBSA-Randolph Youth
Programs assistant and Torch Club adviser. “Nationwide, Torch Club members
range in age from 11 to 13, but our Torch Club is open to youth 9 to 13 years
old. Youth at this age are at a developmental stage where it is crucial to
cultivate a sense of belonging, self-esteem and accomplishment.”
Dunbar said at the beginning of the school year Torch Club
members elect their officers, then design, organize and manage their activities
within the organization’s four pillars: service to club and community,
education, health and fitness, and social recreation.
“By getting involved in these projects, each member has
opportunities to continue building good character skills that they are learning
at home and school,” Dunbar said. “They learn and practice leadership,
decision-making, public speaking, negotiation, respect, responsibility and
compassion, just to mention a few.”
Each school year, the club pursues a community service
project that follows the national Torch Club theme. This year’s theme was
“Protecting Animals with Service,” or PAWS.
“I asked our members what they thought we could do,” Dunbar
said. “They wanted to visit an animal shelter.”
As it happened, Dunbar discovered an organization called
PAWS for Service, a 20-year-old therapy dog organization with more than 60
teams that make 200 visits each month to schools, hospitals, nursing homes and
veterans’ facilities. PAWS stands for “Pets are Wonderful Support.”
After a presentation featuring one of the organization’s
therapy dogs at Youth Programs in March, Torch Club members embarked on the
first phase of their PAWS project – to support the PAWS therapy dog mission,
Dunbar said.
The club organized two bake sales while the Keystone Club, a
Youth Programs club for older students, pledged to match the amount netted by
the bake sales, she said.
Counting proceeds from the bake sales, the Keystone Club’s
matching donation and a few individual contributions, the club was able to send
PAWS for Service a check for $425.
The Torch Club members’ desire to visit an animal shelter
came to fruition with the next two phases of their PAWS project.
They took their old T-shirts and secured T-shirt donations
from others to create chew toys for the Universal City Animal Shelter and
accumulated donations of dog food, cat food and cat litter for the shelter. On
April 16, they visited the shelter to present the chew toys, food and cat
litter to shelter representatives and were treated to a tour of the facility.
“We’re teaching them to give back to the community,” Dunbar
said. “Without the funds we receive from various sources, our programs wouldn’t
exist. It’s good to establish those connections; it makes them feel like
they’re accomplishing something special.”
Bianca McNabb, a Youth Programs assistant who also serves as
Torch Club adviser, said the club, which has 16 members, meets every Tuesday after
school.
“They brainstorm and come up with ideas about what community
service projects they’d like to do,” she said.
Among the other projects they accomplished this school year
were a bake sale that raised $225 for the St. Jude Children’s Hospital and the
collection of toys, clothes and shoes for families in SAMMinistries’
transitional housing, a collaborative effort with Youth Programs’ Keystone and
Smart Girls clubs.
Dunbar said community service projects allow Torch Club
members to embrace all four of the club’s pillars. One example was planting
flowers outside the pre-teen room for Earth Day.
“I didn’t tell our members we would have covered education,
health and fitness, and social recreation while working on a community project,
but we did,” she said. “We were working together, having fun while cleaning the
dirt from all the weeds, digging holes and preparing the place for the new
plants to be able to grow.”
Aaliyah Crippen, a 12-year-old sixth-grader at Randolph
Middle School who serves as the club’s vice president, said membership has
benefited her in a number of ways.
“Meeting and working with new people has helped me become a
lot more open,” she said. “I’ve also enjoyed community service and I’m proud
that we come in every day to work on different projects.”
Dunbar said the Torch Club gives members a way to experience
new things and understand their valuable support to the community.
“Even though our projects are little, the impact on other
people’s lives is big and the impact on our future will be even bigger,” she
said.