Background
Kids Club is a program that is part of Rantoul Area Project. The goals of the Area Project Movement is organizing community, Engage youth in pro-social activities, and advocate for neighborhood members, both young and old. Within this movement, the goals of Rantoul Area Project (Kids Club) is to provide children a place to go to play and learn after school. When the Air Force moved out about 20 years ago, Rantoul was left with loss of business and an economic downfall. This has left a huge impact on the neighborhoods within the town. Rantoul Area Project promotes community engagement where neighbors care about each other.
History of Kids Club
This is Kids Club’s 3rd location. Also, this is the 2nd computer lab LIS 451 has built for Kids Club (last was in 2007) In the last computer lab, there was a lot of friendly competition with educational games. Wendy, the coordinator, wanted to see more of this.
Kids Club Overview
Kids Club is an outreach center for 20-30 children. They are open Monday-Friday from 3:30pm-5:30 pm during the school year and all day during summer vacations. It offer after-school programs from neighborhood children from K-8. After-school programs include homework help, educational art projects, and other activities offered by volunteers (i.e. food experiment). The club is run by one paid coordinator and various volunteers.
Why do they need a computer lab?
Right now, most of the attendees of Kids Club are elementary students. The coordinator wants to change this by offering homework help with a computer lab that has access to internet so students can do their research projects and papers. Also, she wants various educational games to encourage learning through fun and friendly competition. Finally, it is needed for the coordinator and volunteers to find resource materials faster and more efficiently.
Logic Model
After the initial visit to Kids Club, we came up with logic Model. (Click the image for full size view)
Needs
•7 computers and monitors- 2 are provided by Kids Club (6 computers in the computer room and 1 placed in the office)
•1 printer (placed in the office)
Space
The room can be changed as much as we wanted as long as it can be changed back again the next time the club moves . The coordinator wanted vivid colors so it can encourage children’s imagination and give them a feeling that it is a fun place to be.