More than 70 juniors, parents, scholars, program leaders, and volunteers celebrated the official kickoff of the Foundation’s G.A.M.E. Club program last week. The event was held at Maggie Hathaway GC in South Los Angeles and featured a BBQ, music, golf contests, teambuilding and presentations by youth leaders. The juniors in this program have been individually nominated to participate in this pilot program based on their continual involvement in both golf and education with the SCGA Foundation as well as a golf and life skills based junior program.
Second year SCGA Foundation Scholar and volunteer at the kickoff Kenneth Punyasavatsut says, “I just want to thank the SCGA Foundation again for setting up a wonderful event for the kids. The kids from the Tiger Woods Learning Center are excited for the new VAULT point system that they can soon use. Personally, I think it that it’s a great incentive for these kids to work harder to achieve their goals and be rewarded for all their hard work.”
The point system Punyasavatsut describes follows the model of a bank account system, whereby juniors will earn points based on good grades, volunteer work and participation in career and educational field trips organized by the SCGA Foundation donors and volunteers. They will be able to spend their points to participate in golf events at private country clubs such as The Los Angeles CC and Bel-Air CC and play in competitive junior golf tournaments.
SCGA Foundation Executive Director Kevin Gigax says, “Ultimately, we want to provide more opportunities for youth to play golf while maintaining a high level of academic support for them within their communities and networks. We feel that this incentive based program will help us help them achieve their goals.”
The acronym VAULT stands for Volunteer, Academics, Leadership and Tutoring and is inspired by a best practice that Pro Kids Golf Academy created eight years ago called PRO (Point Reward Opportunity). If you are interested in hosting the juniors for a tour of your business or would like to make a financial contribution to this program, please write to foundation@scga.org.