Boys & Girls Club Announces New Logo, Motto

The of Southwest County unveiled a new logo and motto today.

The motto, "Great futures start at The Clubs," was announced at a meeting at the nonprofit's organization at 31465 Via Cordoba in Temecula.

The new logo eschews the traditional clasping hands for something without pictures.

"It gives us a more streamline look, it brings us up to date," said Maryann Edwards, the club's CEO and a member of the Temecula City Council.

The club also announced its new website is up and running. To see it, click here.

The old logo was saddled with stereotypes with which Temecula residents had difficulty relating, said Steve Amante, the member of the nonprofit's board of directors.

"Addressing misconceptions is big," he said during the meeting. "We're not just a daycare, we're changing kids' lives."

The organization's national office creates ads that depict children living in urban slums going to the club to escape gangs, and this is usually not usually the case for club members in southwest Riverside County, Amante said.

In this region, members would more likely be latch-key kids vegetating alone in front of a television after school, he said. "We want parents to know there's a better alternative to coming home alone and playing video games."

Other people think the club is little more than a daycare, Edwards said. "We are so much ore than a daycare," she said.

The club does care for children ages 6-18 years, it runs numerous programs and services not found at daycares.

The club offers a digital art program, art lessons, ballet and hip-hop dance classes and guitar lessons. They also work with the children on humanitarian projects, such as passing out blankets to the homeless in Los Angeles. It also offers after-school tutoring, Edwards said.

The club serves 65 schools in southwest Riverside County with four clubs: two in Temecula and one in Murrieta and Lake Elsinore.

The club offers two main programs: after-school care for $20 a year and 6 a.m.-6 p.m. care for $300 a month. The club buses the members to and from school as part of the all-day care.

Many locals have no idea what the club does, said Amante. "You talk to people, and they say, 'I had no idea,'" he said.

The club also offers scholarships for needy families that get them 50 percent off the price, Edwards said. "We have never turned a child away who has qualified for a scholarship," she said.

The club's heads hope the new logo and motto will change the way locals think of the organization.

"Great branding takes time, but sooner or later, when people hear, 'Great futures start at The Clubs,' they're going to think of the Boys and Girls Club,'" Amante said.

The club gets is funded mostly by local sources, not from the government or from the organization's national office, board members said.

Times have been tough for the club and for other similar nonprofit organizations during the recession. To read more about that, click here.

"Every penny this staff (gets) comes from the community," Amante said. "There's no magic bank that comes from the state or the feds."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misrepresented Steve Amante's role at the Boys and Girls Club. He is a member of the board of directors and the chair of the marketing committee.