Students and staff with the Starke County Youth Club will be participating in the Lights On Afterschool program tomorrow afternoon at 4:30 p.m. at the Knox Elementary School Cafeteria. Lawmakers, parents, school administrators and you are invited to attend this special event.
“The big purpose is for us to draw attention to the need after school,” said Melissa Smith, Starke County Youth Club Program Director. “Without the right kind of funding, programs like ours can be closed and we want to keep kids safe and learning after school. Lights on sends that message and our kids are happy to celebrate and encourage people to come and learn about the importance of keeping buildings like ours and programs like ours open after school.”
Melissa was asked what the students will be doing during the local recognition of the event tomorrow.
“The kids will be doing a really fun presentation. Each grade level will be doing something different. Our Kindergarteners will be doing a little alphabet soup poem, and all the way through to our fifth grade kids who will be doing a black light presentation with glowing sticks from https://glowdecoration.com. We’re really excited and we hope to see a lot of people come out.”
The Starke County Youth Club provides students at Knox, North Judson-San Pierre and Oregon-Davis Schools with after school activities and programs.
“Each day after school, children and students come in and we provide homework assistance and then the students get to go through a variety of activities. Some of them are academic, so there’s math centers and literacy centers, and then some of them are enrichment activities so kids get to do things like drama, music, art and cooking classes. These are things that they might not get to do during day school. They certainly hold value for our students.”
