Community
Development

Hi Broncos Country!

We are getting so excited!  The grand opening of the new Teen Center is just a month away!  Things are really progressing now…see all the updated pictures of the Teen Center below!

Also just around the corner is the 2008 Boys and Girls Club Youth of the Year Gala!  We look forward to this event each year and especially love all of the kids’ performances throughout the evening.  Our President and CEO Pat Bowlen along with the Denver Broncos is receiving the Champion of Youth Award this year.  It is an incredible honor and there will be many people from the Broncos organization on hand that night in support of the event including Domonique Foxworth, Champ Bailey, Boss Bailey and Hamza Abdullah!  We’ll chat again soon!

Hello Broncos Country.

More exciting progress at the future Darrent Williams Memorial Teen Center!  As you can see from the photos, the main registration area connecting the Broncos Boys and Girls Club to the DWMTC is framed in and the registration desk is taking shape.  With all this construction, you’d think the Club’s attendance and activity level would be low but it has been quite the opposite.

The Club has still be operating at capacity most days and just this past Wednesday night, the Club hosted its Youth of the Year dinner that honors the Youth of the Year winners and encourages the kids to take on speaking roles in the formal program.  Dinner — including a special VIP room with waiter service — is served to all of the members, staff and volunteers in attendance including our very own Billy Thompson and Domonique Foxworth.

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 Hi Broncos Country.

We thought we’d pass along some more photos of the construction progress underway at the future Darrent Williams Memorial Teen Center.  Unfortunately we had a few construction setbacks that will push the grand opening back to May 29, 2008.  Although the delay isn’t ideal, we are now more than ever focused on making sure when the Teen Center does open, it is just as fabulous and wonderful as the teens had imagined it would be.  We look forward to continuing to post photos and more updates as we have them throughout the spring!  We’ll chat again soon!

As I was returning from lunch today I was pleasantly surprised to find Domonique Foxworth (our 2007 Denver Broncos Man of the Year) at our office–just stopping by to say hi.  Domonique has been such a wonderful player ambassador for our department and the Broncos Boys and Girls Club.  It is always great to see him and get a chance to catch up–especially in the off season.  Otherwise, we have to be satisfied reading his entertaining blog just like everyone else to find out what he is up to.

 We chatted for a good while about the team, the teens at the Club and went over some designs from a local company–Performance Graphics–that will be painting a special mural featuring Darrent Williams at the new Darrent Williams Memorial Teen Center.  Our entire department, along with Domonique and fellow teammate Nate Jackson have been working with the teens and Rick of Performance Graphics to come up with a very inspiring piece of art.

So Domonique and I chatted a bit as we looked everything over, he ran a couple of things by Champ over the phone (Champ was in Hawaii preparing for the Pro Bowl) and incorporated Nate’s imput through a few emails and now are all set to move forward with the mural.

What an exciting and productive Thursday afternoon!  Anyways, Domonique says hi to Broncos Country…looking forward to updating you again soon!

Hi Broncos Country!

How cool is this!?  We have some pictures of the construction site at the future Darrent Williams Memorial Teen Center that we thought you all would enjoy.  We’ll keep posting them throughout the construction process so you all can view the project’s progress.  Definitely let us know if you have any specific questions about what is what in these photos…we’ll do our best to describe what you are looking at.  The exciting part is by mid-April, the DWMTC will be completed and already packed full of teens!

Hi Broncos Country.

A couple of quick updates for everyone that we were excited to share.

First and foremost…construction is underway for the Darrent Williams Memorial Teen Center adjacent to the Denver Broncos Boys and Girls Club in Montbello and we couldn’t be more thrilled.  We were just out at the Club on Monday to meet with local artist Jenny West, our own Nate Jackson, Teen Center Director Guy Johnson and Broncos Boys and Girls Club Director Rich Barrows to scope out a wall and brainstorm about a mural honoring Darrent for the Teen Center.  You could absolutely feel the buzz from the kids as they have seen construction begin and we have recently confirmed a grand opening date:  April 22, 2008!  It is amazing to see the dream of these teens finally being realized and know we are just months away from a completed teen center–time to get busy making plans for that big celebration! 

Our next update is not nearly as exciting but nevertheless a symbolic step for our Community Development Department.  We spent most of Monday (and numerous days prior pre-packing and sorting) moving into a beautiful new office space at INVESCO Field at Mile High.  Just down the hall from our previous office, the new one allows us all to be together as we were previous split up between two separate spaces.  Amidst boxes, dust and a lot of discovering forgotten files we have settled into our new space feeling rejuvenated and looking forward to transferring all of that new energy into our community efforts in 2008.

Hope the New Year has been great so far for all of you as well…we’ll chat again soon!

With the holidays upon us and the New Year just around the corner, more Broncos are helping those less fortunate celebrate the season.

John and Linda Lynch hosted the 11th Annual John Lynch Foundation Christmas Party for Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Denver last night.  The party for 35 children included a surprise visit from Santa to deliver gifts courtesy of Wal-Mart, a holiday dinner and attendance at the musical White Christmas courtesy of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.  The program originated in Tampa, Florida and each year participating Boys and Girls Clubs directors nominate children from each club to attend.  The children’s wish lists were secretly collected and then granted by the John Lynch Foundation and Wal-Mart.  The Lynch Foundation was established in 2000 and is committed to developing leaders by encouraging dreams, providing programs that assist and motivate and recognizing achievement and excellence.

In a similar holiday spirit, Daniel Graham hosted 30 children from Young Life and Denver Kids at the Target store in Glendale last night as well.  Graham and several teammates helped the kids spend a gift card provided by Target for their families and themselves on holiday gifts.   Kids also had the opportunity to have photos taken with each of the players attending.  What a fun way to spend the holidays!

We are so happy to share with you that the Darrent Williams Memorial Teen Center is officially underway.  Work on prepping the interior of the building for the renovations began over the past week.  Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Denver has started searching for a Center director.  Ed Dwight, the world-renowned artist who is creating the life-size bronze of Darrent that will be in the courtyard of the Center, has also had his initial meeting with our Teen Center members who will be helping him with the sculpture. 

We are thrilled to be at this point and continue to raise the funds for completion. . . .if all goes according to planned, we should have the doors open in March of 2008.  It really does feel good to be able to give you this update.

As I have mentioned before, phase 2 of our dream to honor Darrent’s legacy is to build a gymnasium as part of the Teen Center.  NFL Charities has agreed to grant to this project under their new Fitness Zone campaign.  Last week, we received a start-up grant from them for $55,000 with the promise for the same in 2008.  We are definitely on our way with the gym as well.

On a different note, our department had a wonderful experience this year facilitating our annual Walter Payton Man of the Year selection process.  We had four great candidates from our team whom we put before a highly respected selection committee comprised of community and business leaders.  These guys were evaluated on their on- and off-field leadership and community involvement.  We will announce their nominations and the winner later this month.  I think we were all very proud of the community work these guys did and very honored to put them before the selection committee…stay tuned for the winner. 

Until next time, have a great week in Broncos Country!

Tuesday, Oct. 16 marked our annual NFL Hometown Huddle program in partnership with Mile High United Way.  This year’s joint service project focused on kids’ fitness as part of the NFL Play :60 campaign, encouraging children to get at least 60 minutes of exercise in per day.

Tuesday was a perfect day for this.  The skies were blue, the sun was shining and about 120 kids from Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Denver were raring to go as the Broncos and United Way introduced them to the fundamentals of football.

Players Brian Clark, Chris Myers, Domonique Foxworth and Brandon Marshall joined Ring of Fame Member Billy Thompson in hosting five different stations of the Gatorade Junior Training Camp, with each running a station that presented a different football skill for the kids to practice while getting exercise at the same time.

Brandon Marshall had his kids doing the infamous touchdown dance of their choosing after completing his drills.  Will we see any of these dance renditions from Brandon on Sunday?  He saw a lot of good material from which to choose.

The day was capped off by decadent ice cream treats from Cold Stone for all who participated.  That may not exactly support the primary health and fitness message for the day, but it sure brought smiles to the kids’ faces and supported the notion that life is all about balance.

Three a.m. came very early this morning and I have a brand new appreciation for the folks who broadcast live radio and live television during the early morning rush hour.

Upon arriving at our Denver Broncos Boys and Girls Club in Montbello 45 minutes later, I was greeted by Rich Barrows, our club director who is a rock star and had spent endless hours overnight making our club absolutely pristine in preparation for our live radio remote today with partner News Radio 850 KOA benefitting the Darrent Williams Memorial Teen Center legacy project.

At 4:45 a.m., in walks Guy Johnson, a regular Club member and future member of the Darrent Williams Memorial Teen Center. Guy has become friends with Rod Smith over the past couple of years and his mentor is clearly rubbing off as Guy can be seen often in the end zone. Might I say that I was very touched that Guy was ready to go and support Darrent’s legacy bright and early this morning.

Shortly after, at 5:20 a.m., in walks Broncos linebacker Louis Green and he could not have been more gracious and more focused on our goal at hand — to raise awareness for the Teen Center and thank our community fans. Thank you, Louis.

Once the hour of 6 a.m. rolled around, the Club was just in a frenzy with wonderful community members, kids and so many of our Broncos players on hand that it appeared as though the entire roster came out in honor of Darrent Williams.

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