Community Y, Kids Bridge joining forces
Youth services center
to function as branch
RED BANK — In its continuing efforts to better coordinate programs designed to assist borough children, the Community YMCA announced last week it would be merging with the Children’s Cultural Center At Red Bank.
"We’re looking at the whole picture," said Richard W. Pollock, president and chief financial officer of the Community YMCA.
This announcement comes on the heals of the recent merger between the YMCA and the Count Basie Learning Center, another community outreach facility, designed to serve, tutor and mentor the area youth.
According to Pollock, bringing these organizations under the YMCA umbrella will allow for greater access to services provided by all these entities.
"We will be able to provide educational enrichment, recreation, and arts and humanities," Pollock said.
Pollock’s comments were made at a gathering of members of the Red Bank Education and Development Initiative, a group that has been working to coordinate the efforts of many borough officials organizations, businesses, schools, and churches, with the hope of improving education and opportunities for the borough youth.
The combining of these organizations is another way to assist area children, by applying focus on activities conducted after school hours and concentrating on a "holistic approach of child development," according to Pollock.
"We now have a vision of our children out of school," he said.
Like the learning center, the cultural center, also referred to as Kids Bridge, would become a branch of the YMCA, with its board of trustees being named as a branch board of management for the YMCA, Pollock said. Also Tricia Schaeffer, executive director of Kids Bridge, will continue to serve, but as a branch executive of the Cultural Center.
"They have great programs," Pollock said of Kids Bridge and the learning center. However, "they’re struggling administratively," he added.
In the case of Kids Bridge, the cultural center has been working to restore the historic former municipal building and police station, 51 Monmouth St., to be used as its home.
To finish the ongoing renovations of that building will cost approximately $1 million, and the YMCA will work toward raising the necessary funds, according to Pollock.
"We’d like to raise a million dollars by Jan. 1 and get it up and running for the kids of Red Bank," he said.
The cultural center is planned to be an interactive facility with a focus on multi-culturalism and the visual and performing arts, such as photography, dance and theater. It would incorporate various workshops, have access to a working music sound study, and the like, according to Lawrence Roberts, who was chairman of the center’s board of trustees, and now will be the chair of the branch board of management.
Initially, according to Roberts, the facility was to be aimed at children from the ages of 2-12. Eventually Roberts said he hoped to expand it to the age of 16.
"We’re an organization for the children," he said.