Aaliyah, 14, says she was "really shy, quiet, not outgoing" when she started at the Boys & Girls Club in Immokalee. Now an 8th grader, she wants to become an OB-GYN.
"The fact that women have the power of giving birth to new life, and I think it's really amazing," she said.
The Boys & Girls Club of Collier County made membership free for all families this year, a change the organization says responds to rising costs for working families. The club serves more than 4,600 children and teens each year and expects to serve about 145,000 meals this year, 35,000 more than last year.
Aaliyah has attended the club since 6th grade. Her younger sister attends too.
"The Boys & Girls Club gave me a lot of confidence," she said. "I got better at communication, and I became friends with a lot of new people."
When she told her mother, Farebing Jacsaint, about her plans, Jacsaint said she told her daughter it would take hard work and offered her support.
"Just let me know what you need, and I'll try to get it," Jacsaint said.
Aaliyah said the future still worries her. "Having to deal with things for myself. Like doing taxes. Oh, that scares me," she said.
For now, she has one less thing to worry about. Martha Perez, the club's vice president of marketing and events, said leaders decided to eliminate fees after seeing families facing added costs.
"There is so much demand, especially in communities like Immokalee, where they went a while without even having a grocery store available to them," Perez said.
She said providing nutritious meals to the growing number of children the club serves is made possible by the generosity of the community.
"We rely on a combination of grant funding, community and corporate partnerships, and philanthropic support, but most importantly, it is the caring individual donors who make this work possible," Perez said.
The club's Immokalee location serves a community that went nearly a year without a grocery store after the local Winn-Dixie closed. An Aldi opened in it's place in September. Perez said that for many children, a club meal may be the last of their day.
"There might be an idea of what someone who is at risk or of need looks like," she said. "But the reality is that all families have been impacted."
Jacsaint said rising grocery prices have made budgeting difficult. "So we just day-by-day," she said. The club's meals have helped "take a lot load off of me with groceries," she said, "to make sure that we have a meal every day."
Perez said the club has no plans of slowing down.
“And as we continue to grow as the largest out-of-school-time provider in Collier County, we're looking forward to be able to serve an additional 45,000 meals.”
WGCU is your trusted source for news and information in Southwest Florida. We are a nonprofit public service, and your support is more critical than ever. Keep public media strong and donate now. Thank you.
