New Boys & Girls Club provides safe, nurturing environment in Las Vegas Trail area
A new Boys & Girls Club is providing arts, crafts and other programs to children in the Las Vegas Trail area.
ON Tuesday, the LVTRise board of directors celebrated the opening of the new Boys & Girls Club building on site where 50 to 60 children come every day to focus on health and wellness along with arts and crafts programs.
“We are very excited to have this beautiful new Club where youth can come and feel safe, encouraged and where they can form new friendships,” Boys and Girls Club of Greater Tarrant County CEO & President Daphne Barlow Stigliano said in a news release.
Before the new building opened June 13, children were in a smaller facility across the street. The LVTRise board also named Paige Charbonnet as executive director.
Charbonnet served as interim executive director, and before that, she served as a board member and as secretary.
According to the news release, Charbonnet and her family live near Las Vegas Trail, and she supported LVTRise when she learned about the needs in the area.
LVTRise began as a mobile center to address the need for community programs and other services in the Las Vegas Trail area. A series of town hall meetings uncovered significant deficiencies and a lack of resources in this underserved part of the community.
In 2018, the Las Vegas Trail Revitalization Project became the registered nonprofit currently known as LVTRise, Inc.
In October 2020, Rise Community Center opened to the public providing a permanent home for the organization. In January 2021, Fort Worth opened a branch of the public library system in the community center to expand available resources.
In May, the Fort Worth City Council approved a land lease agreement that paved the way for a Las Vegas Trail Child Development Campus to become a reality for the high need community. Child Care Associates will build and operate the new facility that will be built adjacent to the existing Rise Community Center.
Construction is estimated to start this fall and is projected to take 18 months to build and finish out an eight classroom, approximately 8,600 square foot child development facility. An estimated 100 children and their families will be served through Head Start and Early Head Start.
Since its inception, LVTRise has dedicated its work to collaborating with community partners, empowering community members through training and case management and impacting the Las Vegas Trail community addressing education, improved quality housing and reducing neighborhood crime.
For more information, visit LVTRise.org.
This story was originally published July 20, 2022 at 5:30 AM.