The final school bell on Friday, June 5 heralded the oft-anticipated summer release for kids across the Wausau area. But for many working parents in town, it signaled a scramble for affordable, high-quality childcare during the coming months.
The Boys & Girls Club of the Wausau Area steps into that gap every summer, offering a staggering 11-hour daily weekday operation that provides families with an affordable lifeline that keeps hundreds of kids safe, fed and engaged for less than $40 for the entire summer.
Starting last week, the Boys & Girls Club’s Caroline S. Mark Site in Wausau transformed into a vibrant summer haven where parents can drop their children off on the way to work, knowing they won’t sit in front of the TV or on their phones all day. Instead, they have the opportunity to experience everything from 3D printing to swimming — all while being fed breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack.
“Going into our first day of summer last week, we had about 320 kids and teens enrolled. We’ll see that well past 600 by the time the summer is over,” said Kim Larsen, Wausau Boys and Girls Club CEO. “On a daily basis, we will average about 200-plus kids per day within the building.”
Operating with a $2.2 million budget fueled by community donations, grants and fundraising events, the Boys & Girls Club’s summer program is a massive local undertaking designed to be affordable, reliable and convenient for families.
“We started opening 6:45 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. several years ago as a way to meet the needs of our community so families can drop kids off on their way to work and pick them up at a typical end of the day,” Larsen said. “We know it doesn’t fit every shift, but we try to be open as long as we can to serve as many kids as possible for the summer.”
But the Caroline S. Mark Site isn’t just a holding tank for kids on summer break; it’s an active engine for youth development, offering age-specific centers, daily field trips and hands-on learning that help Wausau’s youth shape positive futures.
Members go on field trips every week, with destinations ranging from local swimming and fishing spots to larger adventures like Mount Olympus in Wisconsin Dells, or local business tours and an upcoming Brewers game.
“Last year we took about 250 different field trips,” Larsen said.
The field trips aren’t just about getting kids out of the building and having fun (though that’s a big part of it). The trips offer students an opportunity to see more of their community, explore the different roles that make a community vibrant and successful, and generally make kids feel at home in the Wausau area.
“Our goal is to make sure that they feel confident and safe in their community but also feel like an important part of the community,” Larsen said. “We just talked with a club member this morning and he and his family moved a mile away from his old house. Well, a mile in any community can be a significant difference. So, we want to make sure that they know what’s available in their neighborhood — what parks they can go to, what’s comfortable, all that kind of stuff ... really help build that connection so they know that they are an important part of this community and they belong anywhere just as much as anybody else.”
Back inside the facility, youth participate in hands-on learning that includes cooking classes in the teaching kitchen, wellness programs like yoga and dance, and STEM activities. The club blends creativity with technology through popular activities like Dungeons & Dragons, where teens develop imaginative campaigns and can even manufacture their own custom-designed characters using the art studio’s 3D printers.
“There’s definitely peer-to-peer interactions,” Larsen said. “As they transition from elementary to middle school, there’s such a developmental change that happens there — that sense of independence — and that’s what we try to do with the transition from fifth grade in the elementary center to our teen center, too. “
The building is split into two areas: the teen center for kids entering grades six through 12 and an elementary center for kids grades three through five. The teen center is a bit less structured than the elementary center, Larsen explained. Teens have more freedom to pursue activities and projects when they want and how they want. Teens are also offered volunteer staff roles as part of the club’s workforce readiness program.
“We call it junior staff,” Larsen said. “They help at the front desk, they might help serve lunch or a snack, they’re helping downstairs in the elementary center with programs, grabbing program supplies, whatever that looks like. They definitely have leadership opportunities in those spaces.”
For an annual enrollment fee of $20 and a summer fee of just $25 (teens) or $35 (elementary), the club provides an essential safety net that extends far beyond recreation. Over the course of the 11-week program, the facility will serve thousands of free meals for all club members, closing a critical food security gap for families who normally rely on free and reduced school lunches.
“We had about 60 kids in the building at 7:30 a.m. this morning and that will continue to increase as families get used to there not being school,” Larsen said on June 8.
Over the course of the summer, Larsen said, the club will serve about 17,000 meals and snacks.
“Without that program some of those kids wouldn’t have any other option. We want to make sure that we can help close that gap for families,” Larsen said. “For some families, it relieves an additional financial strain on their resources if kids are getting free and reduced lunches during the school year ... to have the opportunity to add breakfast and a snack — and then during the school year to do afternoon snack and dinner at the site — it’s helping kids grow, be healthy and be prepared for the school day.”
While the immediate childcare relief for working parents is clear, the true value of the club’s summer programming is measured in the futures it helps build. By exposing youth to a diverse field of local career possibilities through business tours and building their independence as they transition from the elementary center to the teen center, the club acts as a vital partner in developing Wausau’s next generation of successful adults.
Success stories are developed and live on every day at the club. One current staff member began attending the club’s summer programming when she was in sixth grade. As she finished up her time in high school, she applied for the club’s Youth of the Year award.
“We asked her what her future plans were and at the time she said, ‘I’m going to work for the club,’ and she was employed with us part-time,” Larsen recalled. “And I said, ‘You can’t only work for us part-time. That’s not going to get you where you want to be.’”
Larsen explained to the student that a part-time job at the club would not fulfill all her needs, which included helping support her mother.
“She said that it had never occurred to her to go to college until we sat and had that conversation with her,” Larsen said. “For as many barriers as she could create for herself, we were helping her figure out how to remove that barrier to access. She had great grades. It just was not on her radar.”
That former club member recently graduated from UW-Stevens Point with a degree in family consumer science and is pursuing a career in that field while working for the club.
“To be part of her whole story, and watch her launch into successful adulthood, she’s why we do what we do,” Larsen said.
Since first offering summer programming in the late-1990s, the Boys & Girls Club is now serving second-generation families, whose parents attended the programming and now send their children to the Caroline S. Mark Site.
For Larsen and her staff, that’s the best possible endorsement the program could receive.
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