A HUGE thank you to Ms. Angela Espenscheid and Girl Scouts of Citrus Council Troop #1276 for their Gold Award Mural in our newly renovated Intervention & Assessment Center!
Over the last two months, Angie and our development team have put together an interactive mural for our I&A Center, as well as running a game donation drive. We now have a beautiful game room and a brand new Nintendo Switch system for our youth to enjoy! It is thanks to passionate young minds like Angie’s that we can celebrate growth here at Boys Town Central Florida.
Thank you also to Oviedo Mayor, Megan Sladek, Fred & Catherine Espenschied, and Lorie A Massey for joining in this fun game night! Our youth & staff had a blast.
Oviedo Girl Scout Angie Espenscheid will soon receive her Gold Award pin after serving 80 hours at Boys Town Central Florida where she revamped the youths' game room.
Girl Scout Angie Espenscheid helped update the Boys Town Central Florida game room with new games and a vibrant mural, changing the environment for the kids who stay there.
With an idea in mind and donated paint, Espenscheid made a makeshift projector with her phone and shone a game controller outline on the Boys Town wall to map out a soon-to-be orange-colored mural.
Six months ago, the game room at the Boys Town Intervention & Assessment Center had two old pieces of furniture with an entertainment center of broken and outdated games for the kids to play with.
Espenscheid said she had learned about Boys Town when helping a scout in her troop work on their award project there, installing a butterfly garden.
"When I went to Boys Town I was like, 'wow this is a really cool place,'" Espenscheid said. "Some of the people at Boys Town, working there, expressed a need for a mural in their game room."
Boys Town Central Florida Development Coordinator Veronica Durant said it wasn't as fun or inviting before, but now, staff tells her that the kids are using the room much more. "She really came through and made it a much more friendly area," she said.
More than just the appearance was changed though, through Espenscheid's project.
Davine Hardy, the I&A Center administrative assistant, said the game room is the biggest room you see when walking into the center, drawing everyone's attention to it. When the room was not nicely done the youth would destroy it to where staff had to keep the doors closed, Hardy said. This was the case with other areas of the center as well.
"However, now that the building has been renovated, every door is open because we want to broadcast it, and we want to see it, and the kids have been treating it very accordingly to where they don't want to mess it up," Hardy said.
She said the updates to the campus, like the center's renovation, were encouraged by Laurie Stern who stepped into the executive director position at Boys Town two years and seven months ago. Staff is currently updating every room in the center; the game room was just the start.
Durant said the game room had "desperately" needed a paint job. The walls in the room, now painted a new coat of light blue, had graffiti from previous groups of kids who came through the center.
"We are working really hard to make it a more family-friendly environment," Durant said.
Program Director Aleundro McCray has worked at Boys Town for 19 years now. He works closely with the youth and said he's recently seen an improved behavior from the kids with the renovation.
"It's been nothing like it used to be, and I think this helps," McCray said.
He thinks they get a better feeling about themselves now. "Because it looks better they tend to act better," McCray said. He said they now have a good atmosphere and he is impressed with the outcome.
"You didn't have that game room feel," McCray said. "This looks like a game room."
Read a full article at Oviedo Community News.
