The Daily Citizen, Dalton, GA

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January 15, 2012

Community center needs volunteers

Dalton Daily Citizen

The official reopening of the Dalton Community Center tomorrow could be the start of something very big, not just for the east side of town but for the entire city.

Two years ago, the city tore down the old community center and began construction on a new building.

The 50,000-square-foot building will have two full-size basketball courts, compared to one middle school-size gym in the previous building, as well as an indoor walking track, a weight room with advanced equipment and a large meeting room that can be divided into smaller rooms if needed.

But it isn’t the building and the equipment that makes the new community center unique.

Dalton officials want to use it to attract children and provide them with the skills and outlook they’ll need to succeed in school and in life.

They’ve already got a agreement to bring an office of the federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program to the community center. That program provides nutrition services for expectant and new mothers and helps gets children off on the right start.

They’ve also got a commitment from the Dalton-Whitfield Library to open a branch there, and they are trying to bring in a health clinic.

But one of the key programs will be after school services. Officials want to have volunteers there to help students with their homework. That’s how you can help out. We hope to have word in the next few days about how people can sign up to volunteer. And we hope that Dalton Public Schools will provide some orientation and training for those volunteers and give them an after-school program they can implement. When we get that information, we’ll pass it on. And we hope to see this volunteer program grow.

The Dalton Community Center has the potential to provide a long-term economic and cultural boost to the Dalton area. But if we don’t embrace that potential, it will remain just a building.

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