The Woodland Park Boys & Girls Club recently was recognized as the best chapter in the nation.
The chapter, located at 331 SE 20th Place, was notified last Thursday that it was the first in Gainesville to win the national award from the organization, called the Merit Award for Character and Leadership Development.
Freddy Williams, southeast Gainesville area director for Boys & Girls Club, said he will use the $2,000 prize money to expand the Woodland Park programs to the four other Gainesville chapters.
The organization helps the roughly 3,000 children in the organization countywide in every way it can, Williams said, by doing everything from planning after-school sports to keeping children out of gangs.
The Woodland Park and the Eastwood Meadows chapters are partially funded by the Gainesville Housing Authority.
Williams will accept the award May 20 at a Boys & Girls Club conference in New Orleans.
Jacobi King, an 11-year-old who is one of about 140 children who go to the Woodland Park Boys & Girls Club, said if he weren’t there playing football or getting help with homework, he would be “around the house being lazy.”
Williams, 27, said this award makes the Woodland Park center the mark of excellence other programs will try to live up to.
The Boys & Girls Club staff meet with school principals to make sure their students are getting good grades and not missing class.
Staff members also work to create a personal relationship with the students. Williams said he gives his cellphone number to his students and tells them to call him if they have problems.
“If a kid has a sense of usefulness, a sense of belonging, a sense of confidence, it fills a void that is all too often filled with negative or risky behavior,” Williams said.
Williams said the five students who were high school seniors in 2010 graduated and are enrolled in colleges.
“There’s a reason I stayed, and that reason is to make sure we elevate the kids,” Williams said.
