photograph courtesy boys and girls clubs of greater memphis
The Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Memphis provides all manner of after-school activities for students ages 6-18.
Visit any one of the ten independent Boys and Girls Clubs in Memphis and it’s likely to be filled wall to wall with smiling students looking for something fun to do after school. More than 1,400 students, ages 6-18, file into the clubs each day, and the organization wouldn’t have it any other way. After all, students will be participating in programs that enrich them, improve their education, and offer the opportunity to build solid foundations for their future. That, at its core, is what the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Memphis (BGCM) has always been about.
President and CEO Keith Blanchard has been leading the Memphis chapter of the Boys and Girls Clubs since 2014, but his involvement extends back much farther. He first connected with a club in California during his time as a police officer 25 years ago. “We were running a lot of youth programs, things like soccer leagues, or ballet classes,” he says, “and we found that we needed a bigger facility to accommodate all these things. So I went all over California looking at different organizations, and found that the Boys and Girls Clubs had been looking to open a club near us, and it was a good match.”
photograph courtesy boys and girls clubs of greater memphis
Keith Blanchard is president and CEO of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Memphis.
Blanchard took up an official position with the nonprofit at its Gainesville, Florida, location, but after years there he jumped at the opportunity to take over the Memphis branch. The idea that appealed to Blanchard the most was that, at the time, Memphis was the only club location to have a dedicated workforce development program. “That wasn’t quite seen as ‘traditional programming,’ but it was such an important service to provide, I knew that this was where I wanted to be.”
That development comes in many shapes for students at BGCM. The organization takes them on college visits to campuses both in and outside of Memphis. There are visits to job sites with corporate partners like FedEx, Nike, Williams-Sonoma, and various banks. Clubs invite speakers that range from lawyers, to doctors, to firefighters to talk about their professions, and these connections enable students to pursue internships or jump straight into the workforce. “Our goal is to really make a significant dent in the employment situation here,” he says, “and with quality training and quality young people that have gone through our employability skills programs.”
Beyond academic pursuits, the clubs also offer plenty of training in other skills. “We’ve got programs for welding, culinary, automotive, logistics, IT, and we even have a greenhouse, too,” says Blanchard. “Students can get a certification in those fields, which goes a long way towards getting a good job.”
Workforce development has been publicly championed for a long time by BGCM supporter Jay Martin, the founder of Juice Plus+, and Blanchard says it’s large-scale support like that which allows the Memphis organization to remain focused on tackling one of the city’s biggest issues.
“One of the major challenges here is poverty. It’s such a complex issue,” he says, “but it’s one that we’re always looking at ways to help. For example, food insecurity is one of those issues, and we look to provide meals for our club members.” During the school year, Blanchard says the clubs supply snacks and dinners, while during the summer there are three meals available a day. “We also put on cooking classes so they can learn to do it themselves,” he adds, “and we also have a produce garden where students can grow their own food and use that to prepare meals.”
Blanchard identifies mental health issues and juvenile crime as two of the biggest challenges facing young students hoping to rise out of poverty. While he says there’s no magic solution that can fix all of this at once, he wants his organization to keep expanding its services to become a resource for kids all over Shelby County. “We won’t necessarily make a huge short-term impact,” says Blanchard, “but I think long-term we can really start to help with these problems and give these kids a platform.”
But for Blanchard, the number of clubs right now isn’t enough. He says that the organization is always aiming higher, and that the goal is to boost the number of clubs in Memphis up to 50. “It will take a lot of work to make that happen, but there’s no reason why we can’t do it,” he says.
And that isn’t all talk; the organization kicked it up a gear last year, when it announced it had signed a three-year, $9 million partnership with Shelby County Schools to set up ten additional clubs inside Memphis schools. “For us,” says Blanchard, “we always knew that the best way to grow would be through the schools, where we could directly serve more students.” The BGCM identified ten high-priority schools that were struggling academically and began to set up shop. Once administration and principals were bought in, the organization hired over 100 new employees to help staff the new clubs.
“All told, we actually have 11 total school clubs, since we used Craigmont High School as our model for this program,” says Blanchard. “So far, I think it’s been a huge success. I remember giving one tour to an interested partner, and we had 450 kids at that club. That’s almost half the population of a school! You have to think about the fact that the kids don’t have to be there. But they’re coming after school to spend their time there, and I think that’s an indicator that we’re on the right track.”
photograph courtesy boys and girls clubs of greater memphis
But for Blanchard, the number of clubs right now isn’t enough. He says that the organization is always aiming higher, and that the goal is to boost the number of clubs in Memphis up to 50. “It will take a lot of work to make that happen, but there’s no reason why we can’t do it,” he says.
After all, if the organization has a bigger footprint, it can help even more students and fix some of the issues in Memphis it’s trying to fix. “Our first school program at Craigmont has seen the participants have a 100 percent graduation rate from high school, which is amazing,” says Blanchard. “Our goal is to keep those numbers after we’ve scaled up the number of clubs in schools. Then, if we continue to have kids want to show up and participate in our programs, I think we can start to make a dent.”
Looking ahead, Blanchard is immediately excited about the relaunch of the organization’s Memphis music studio. Created in partnership with a Nashville-based organization called Notes to Notes, BGCM six years ago stocked a full music studio with instruments and equipment to introduce members to various facets of the music industry. While the studio shut down during Covid, the club is planning to reopen it this fall, replete with a completely new set of equipment, a reconstructed stage, and even a separate podcast station.
“I’m really excited about that, and even more so because we built a mobile studio, and we’re going to take that to all our schools and introduce students to the music industry,” says Blanchard. “Not just performing, but even things like music marketing, management, being a roadie, really all the things associated with the industry. We launched on October 17th, so we’ll be doing that frequently, bringing in guest speakers from the industry, and so much more to get people interested in music. We want to help youth in Memphis, and I think this studio is a very Memphis way to do that.”
