Activities & Services

As an independent non-profit 501(c)3 social service agency and not a city run center, the Bray Center relies on grants and donations to operate. The programs described above are in large part funded, helping to pay for staff time, supplies, utilities, etc. Then there are the activities and services we provide the community which are not officially funded, in fact the staff time would be considered volunteerism and the supplies and other costs to provide this support must be absorbed by small fundraisers and unexpected donations. The Bray Center can be rented for private activities during hours in which official program activities would not conflict. In fact, rentals are a significant necessity to pay for the "unfunded" activities and services of the agency.

Significant in the non-funded area of Bray Center activities and services are the partnerships which have developed over the years with Department of Corrections Transitional Employment (serving recently released non-violent offenders still on probation) and Senior Employment (serving senior citizens in need of employment) programs. Through these efforts, those organizations place their clients at the Bray Center, to be trained, mentored and supervised in the area of employability skills development and eventual job placement in the community. Bray Center Staff facilitate the basics of employment expectations, time and task supervision, dealing with every day challenges in the lives of those placed with us in order to help them overcome any barriers to their success. Ultimately, these clients and the organizations which place them depend on us to implement the program. Clients are paid by the DOC & SER programs. The Bray Center receives no monetary compensation. It has become evident over the years, that increasing numbers of these placed clients are sometimes the parents and sometimes siblings of the children we serve. This of course affords us even greater access to the avenues of success for program children and their families.

Daily information and referral services provided by the Bray Center benefit callers and visitors who seek assistance with food, housing, employment, social justice, counseling, transportation, transitions of many kinds, and more. Daily crisis intervention occurs whether staff is called on to mediate conflicts or emergencies within families, on the street corners, or in school settings.

When food supplies are available during the summer, 50-75 neighborhood children up to age 18 are served lunch Monday through Thursday. The Bray Center staff pick up or prepare the lunches each day, transport and store them until it is time to serve the children. Without the help of some neighborhood parents and teen volunteers, the agency staff would be responsible for the entire summer lunch operation.

Holidays, block parties, cook outs, wheelbarrow races, and side walk chalk competitions coincide with neighborhood spelling bees, spring clean-up days, and flower planting. A recycling education plan is in the works to focus agency staff, visitors and neighbors on the importance of the new three Rs; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle to go along with the classic Reading, Writing and Arithmatic, which the structured agency programs continue to promote.

UW-Extension Nutrition Experts and Junior Master Gardner programmers from other agencies call upon Bray Center staff to help recruit, enroll, and supervise their work to provide special activities for the children. Many church ministries use agency staff and facilities to reach out to children and families in the neighborhood. Other agencies send their staff to the Bray Center to help reach their specific target populations with program services and benefits. Area child care centers bring their young clients to the Bray Center to use the gym (air conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter). So to, the public school down the block finds the Bray Center gym to be more conducive to teaching their physical education students than their own space.

Families and community groups depend on the Bray Center for a place to hold events, meetings, and celebrations. Individuals rely on access to things like a copy machine and fax service to help facilitate submissions of medical records and utility subsidies. The Bray Center, its open doors and attentive staff assure that all these community needs receive the best attention possible.