Eagle River's Boys and Girls Club was awarded a $10,000 Career Launch Innovation Award from the Boys & Girls Club of America this fall.

The award recognized the club staff for its creative Career Launch program. Instead of simply reading teens a script of how to apply for a job, Tracey Hupe and Robert Sterling utilize their local partnerships. They incorporated Career Launch into the club's Youth Litter Patrol with grants they already received from Anchorage's Department of Parks and Recreation and Alaska Litter Prevention and Recycling.

Those grants allowed them to hire 13 teens paid minimum wage last summer to work for nine weeks, 14 hours per week, to beautify local parks.

Youth Litter Patrol has been part of the Eagle River Boys & Girls Club since 2004, but this year, the teens learned Career Launch tools. Sterling, known as Mr. Rob at the club, walked the teens to local businesses to teach them how to inquire about job availability and how to fill out a job application.

They also teamed with the Area Health Education Center of Providence Health and Services. Students visited their staff, who taught them about careers in health care, helped them with their cover letters and resumes, and conducted mock job interviews.

The award is meaningful to such a small organization, said Hupe. The club competed with those in such larger cities as Fort Worth, Texas; Green Bay, Wis.; and Trenton, N.J.

Making the award even more helpful is the fact that last year the budget for Southcentral Alaska's clubhouses lost $2 million because a Boys & Girls Club of America funder, the U.S. Department of Justice, significantly cut its support nationwide. Eagle River's clubhouse felt that cut, said Alaska clubs' chief operating officer Alana Humphrey.

With this additional funding the club will be less dependent on external grants and can continue its teen programming and recruit more teens. Gap Inc. funded the award.

"Next year I want to have 20 (teens), then 30 the year after that," Sterling said. "We can give teens real world lessons on the workplace and set them up to be successful in the future."