Community Voices: The steps between

I’ve experienced new cultures and communities. I’ve been pushed to explore my passions and where they came from. I have found and listened to mentors and leaders through activities and field trips to colleges and trade schools. The Club has helped me define my next step and, as I graduate high school this spring, I see now how those experiences will influence where me and my peers are headed. I realize now that those steps have all been focused on my own great future, a future that is nearing.

My name is Eduardo Coronado and I’ve been attending the Boys & Girls Clubs of Napa Valley for 11 years. The Club is my second home and I have been attending every day, learning from mistakes, observing healthy choices, and mastering a variety of skills through engaging activities and programs. The Club helped build me up with awareness, built my self-confidence, built up my communication skills and helped me build connections. Being a Club kid surrounded me with people from different backgrounds, interests, and experiences and each of these has been a guide and pathway to the place I am today, the leader I have become and the direction of my future.

But I wasn’t truly always like this. My first few days coming to the Club I was trying to overcome being the new kid in town as I not only just arrived at The Club, but I has also just moved to Napa from Indio California; and being away from family I had to try to make new friends fast. Luckily for me I found my first two friends Miguel and Michael on the bus ride after school to the Club and we remain best friends still to this day because of a place we all think of as a second home, the place that brought us together.

Through those friendships I found my favorite activities. The games that truly helped me find my way, connect with others, and find success. You could always find us hanging around the pool table. With the help of older members and staff, playing everyday I quickly became one of the best players at the Club and got my name on the game room champions leaderboard. You might be rolling your eyes right now and thinking, “Ok, so you played pool at the Club. Great.” But it was through pool that I realized what working hard could get me and that changed my mind on what I could achieve.

If the Pool Table taught me how to work hard it was Club’s Tech Lab that really helped me identify a target for what I wanted to do when I grew up. I come from a low-income family of six and my parents were always having to work hard to provide for us, I never truly had access to technology at home. The Club’s Tech Lab gave me the opportunity to explore, learn how to use computers, how to build structures and even build my very own robot. These programs laid the foundation for my growing passions.

Moving to the middle school program of The Napa Clubhouse meant more friends and more opportunities. This also meant more responsibility and higher expectations. I would learn my most difficult lessons but also find my greatest passion. That’s where I met Crystal, a staff who probably had the biggest impact on me. I learned a lot about my core values from Crystal. She taught me a lot about what it means to be respectful and the value of self-respect. She always expected the best out of us and even though I failed many times, she and the Club never gave up on me. I think that’s because they saw a spark in me and worked every day to turn that spark into a fire.

When I got to high school it meant my last stage of my Club experience. Again, more opportunity would come, but this time from me, in the form of an invite to my friend. I had known Jaime for years but I he always seemed to be uncomfortable and struggling against himself. I asked him to come with me to the Club, thinking that maybe the things I had learned about myself here would help him too. Over the next three years I watched him take every opportunity The Club offered and before I knew it, he had turned his whole life around. His transformation within the Club motivated me to overcome the obstacles of my past failures and the labels that they had placed on me and with the help of The Club I also found an opportunity to reinvent myself.

This past year has been my chance to return to the place that built me, and I’ve embraced every opportunity I could. I helped my community by serving with Keystone as Vice President. I joined The Club's workforce development program meeting successful leaders, learning about pathways to careers. I traveled to southern California to tour seven different colleges with my peers. These experiences changed the way we saw our dreams. What I'm most proud of was becoming an artist for the di Rosa project where through the building of a mural, I helped unite my neighborhood.

Now as a graduating senior I'm going to take these lessons, opportunities, and connections to pursue a career in construction management to build myself, my family, and my community the great future we all deserve. Eleven years ago, I took my first steps into a place that would change my life and this June I’ll step into the great future I’ve created through all the steps in between. I am the future and because of The Boys and Girls Clubs of Napa Valley, the future is now!