Sarah Althauser, a Centralia city councilor and business owner, announced Monday she is taking over as the new executive director of the Boys & Girls Club of Lewis County.
The nonprofit serves roughly 140 children in Lewis County, with locations in Centralia and Chehalis.
While the Chehalis campus is “going strong,” Althauser said the Centralia location was run out of Jefferson-Lincoln Elementary School and has barriers to entry and limited to students who ateend school there due to grant funding. Children from Washington Elementary in Centralia currently do not have a school bus route to any day care facilities, she said.
“We could serve a lot more people in the Centralia community if we had a different (Boys & Girls Club) facility,” she told The Chronicle on Monday.
As she was just learning the ropes of the new role, Althauser said one of her upcoming top priorities is to connect with the United Way of Lewis County, the Centralia city manager and the Economic Alliance of Lewis County, all of which are stakeholders in a proposed United Learning Center.
The multi-purpose center is set to be built in Centralia on the corner of Maple and North Pearl streets and includes day care programs, a children’s museum and a Bezos Learning Center.
If built, the location would include a new space for the Boys & Girls Club in Centralia.
“I am very passionate about youth and our community,” Althauser said when asked what excited her about the new position. “My background is teaching and working with kids in our community, so I’m excited to help out in that capacity.”
On her Facebook post announcing the new full-time position, Althauser wrote she is looking to hire folks who are passionate about serving youth with enthusiastic leadership.
Current job openings include a site coordinator and an after school youth program leader. Read more about the club at https://www.bgcchehalis.org/.
