No Club!

The past week has been very different from most that I will have here. The Club, which is one of my placement sites, has been closed for just over a week. The Club is a place where children and young adults spend time, mostly in the evenings, so they are not wandering the streets. They take lessons in cooking, music, play sports, hang out, and attend mentoring sessions. It is a light in the community that many of the youth gravitate towards.

For the past week the Club has been closed for health and safety reasons. There was a lot of work that needed to be done in cleaning and making sure the Club is in good condition for the people who come. Over the past week my days at the Club have been spent sorting, organizing, throwing things away, and cleaning. It has been a long week. It is amazing how much can accumulate in a couple of years!

During this time, everyday, we had kids coming to the door asking if we were having Club that day. Each day we had to tell them "No" and you could hear the disappointment in their voices. When I would run into the kids on the street they would ask why we aren't having Club and when it would be open again. They are looking forward to coming back. They miss it.

It's funny because most of the kids who come to Club don't have the best manners. Rarely do you get a "thank you" or any acknowledgement for the time you give up to spend with them and to teach them. At times it can seem like they are taking the Club for granted, but they definitely are not and this week has been proof of that. Even with the signs on the doors and us telling them all week we won't be open, they come back each day just to be sure.

Part of me thinks that it is not just about the activities that they are missing, but also the interaction with the people who work at the Club. Yes they like to play games, but I also think that they like seeing us everyday, talking to us, having us check to see how their days have been. They like engaging in the relationships we have with them. We aren't their parent or a sibling, but we are people who care about them and many of them need that. For them just knowing that we care is enough. For us, we don't need them to say "thank you" all the time because we can see it in their smiles and this week hear it in their disappointed voices, how much we mean to them.

There is more work to be done at the Club before we can open again. We want the Club to continue to be a good and safe place for youth to come. Hopefully we will be up and running again by midweek so the kids can have their Club back!