Boys and Girls Club of Ada County w/ Abe Alford

Well, let's get a little more specific about the Meridian Club.

Yeah.

What can you tell me about the history of the club in Meridian and how long has it been here and where all has it been?

Yeah, so the Meridian Club first opened in 2002, and I think we were at the old police station, which is actually somewhere near where we're recording this.

Right

next door to where we are.

Unbound, yeah,

library district here.

And then around 2008, we moved into the current building that we now have on Pine and Meridian.

And that one has been amazing, and huge thanks to Mary Tammy with a lot of the work that she did in helping raise those funds.

We were able to expand into that building and also expand have our facility grow into what it is now before we used to not have our gym and our teen center.

And because of a lot of the help with the city, we were able to expand our facility into, you know, the wonderful place it is now.

Yeah, it was, I know Mayor Tammy served on the board for, I want to say close to 20 years, if my memory serves correctly, maybe a little bit less than that.

but she was super passionate and still is about

the Boys and Girls

Club and the work

that they do and the

partnership that existed.

And for her, it was about, you know, seeing a need in Meridian

that really kind of helped bring the club

here

to

the community.

And I think that through that was her commitment to making sure the club had the facility and the resources to be sustainable.

Yeah, absolutely.