A crowd of around 200 northeast Georgians filled Habersham Central High School’s auditorium Tuesday night for a fundraiser event, featuring a keynote speaker who has become a household name in Georgia.
Football player, business owner and US Senate candidate Herschel Walker was the keynote speaker for the event, which raised funds through ticket sales to benefit the Boys and Girls Club of Lanier in Habersham County, an organization that provides after-school stability for area youth.
Representatives from the Habersham community, as well as members of the Boys and Girls Club of Lanier, spoke on the importance of supporting the organization and their goals of helping northeast Georgia’s children succeed.
“Our aim is to make sure every kid has an opportunity to be successful,” the Boys and Girls Club of Lanier CEO Steven Mickens told the audience. “You’ll be excited to know that 1,000 kids that attend our clubs daily are in a safe place that bolsters a learning environment. Between the hours of 2:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., our kids are involved in tutoring, academic enrichment activities, homework help [and] assistance, chess, checkers, you name it— we’re going to make sure kids are involved in them.”
Mickens says that in Habersham County, the Boys and Girls Club serves 350 children at both the Tim Lee Boys and Girls Club and in the county’s elementary schools.
Wade Rhodes, Chairman of the Steering Committee for the Habersham-based Tim Lee Boys and Girls Club, says that investing in the organization is important to “breaking the cycle” of children becoming involved in illegal activities due to lack of a safe environment outside of school.
“It costs 90,000 to keep one child in a juvenile youth detention center for one year,” Rhodes said. “We can break the cycle of juvenile delinquency by investing in young people.”
Rhodes encouraged attendees to invest in the students walking the halls of Habersham’s schools by investing in the Boys and Girls Club, to give them a safe space after school to learn, grow and stay healthy.
Providing a home and a family
Jasmin Gaudlock, a Gainesville fourth grade teacher, first-generation college student, Boys and Girls Club tutor and alumna appealed to the audience to share how the organization helped her through the toughest times in her childhood.
She says the organization helped her overcome bullying and self-worth issues in middle school, and while things seemed to be on the up-and-up, in high school, everything changed.
“A few years later, my whole family and I began to experience homelessness,” Gaudlock said. “Around the age of 16, I became the sole provider for our family of eight due to unforeseen circumstances. I’m the second oldest of six siblings, so I had a lot of responsibilities to manage. I feel like it was such a rough time in my life and such a critical point as a 16-year-old girl. It was hard to think about going to school, maintaining a 3.8 GPA working 40 plus hours, trying to take care of my family, and making sure everybody was okay.”
Gaudlock says that she was under an extreme amount of pressure, and became separated from her family during this time in her life. Without the Boys and Girls Club, she says she might have given up and not become the person she is today.
“They inspired me and never gave up on me, even in the moments that I just wanted to give up on myself,” she said. “I was so close to some of them that they started to feel like family and the club started to feel like a home— and that’s a really big deal when you don’t have your own home.”
She said that the club continued to support her even after she had grown up. She began working with the organization to put herself through college, and they supported her through a horrible car accident her mother was in that left her with traumatic brain damage. She says that through her toughest times, the Boys and Girls Club was always the place she felt safest.
“When I needed them [the Boys and Girls Club] most, they were there, and they will always be there,” she said. “The Boys and Girls Club will continue to make a positive, everlasting impact on the many youth in our community who lead us into our future. And I hope I can lend a helping hand in that.”
Walker encourages youth to achieve their goals
Walker presented the story of how he pulled himself up over and over again through his childhood and early career to become the person he is today to the audience, and encouraged fundraiser attendees to help children to find the inspiration they need to improve themselves.
“Everyone knows the glory of Herschel Walker, but they don’t know the story,” Walker told the audience. He says through his childhood, he worked on his own to overcome a stutter, bullying and invested in his physical fitness to become one of the University of Georgia’s most accomplished football alumni.
He says that the successes of his post-football career businesses boil down to investing in members of his community, and his community investing in him, to give himself a fulfilling life.
“That’s why I thank all of you for being here,” Walker said. “Because if we help our kids, our kids are our future, and you’ve got to remember that. For every young man and young lady in this audience today, remember this: no matter what you can achieve, if you can see it, you’ve got to dream [it]. And don’t let anyone tell you you can’t.”
Walker closed the event out with a word of encouragement that anyone can succeed.
“God grabbed Herschel Walker out of Wrightsville, Georgia, and he put Herschel Walker through college and the NFL . . . and if he can do me, he can do you,” Walker said.
If you’d like to donate time or money to the Boys and Girls Club to keep the organization’s programs running, you can do so at their website here.
