Bethlehem Christian Academy students, administration, staff, and parents assembled for a ground-breaking ceremony on March 21 for the school’s new gymnasium and high school facility. Once completed, the project will include a gymnasium, weight room, and 15 classrooms, as well as a life sciences laboratory and a chemistry laboratory. The facility also will house a fine arts suite, including a video production room, a dark room, a pottery studio complete with a kiln, a graphic design Macintosh lab, and a traditional art studio. The music suite will include a chorus room, a band room, and a piano keyboard/computer laboratory. As well, the facility will include a functioning performance stage and a cafeteria adequate for anticipated growth. Pictured: Blue and gold shovels stand ready to break ground on the school’s first facility while students and staff wait for the ceremony to begin.

Middle school-aged children from the Boys & Girls Club of Athens were introduced to the sport of scuba diving in April at the YWCO pool by the Dolphin Dive Club (DDC), a group of local certified scuba divers dedicated to continued education and community service, and certified instructors from Dolphin Dive Center. Participants Keivaziay Ball, Trevon Browner, Tyrique Dunn, Diamond Jennings, Shevin Peterson and Destiny Pope were selected by Boys & Girls Club Teen Center Supervisor Dedra Evans in recognition of their good grades and outstanding behavior. Following an introduction, each student was teamed with an instructor and a dive club member and began breathing on the surface of the water with the regulator in their mouth. They then moved on to ducking their faces in the water and breathing through the regulator. Students eventually worked their way up to swimming back and forth across the width of the shallow end of the pool without surfacing. Both DDC and the Boys & Girls club share the same expectations and goals for young people, including positive self-image, education, employment, community involvement, health and well-being, and strong moral compass. Pictured: Boys & Girls Club members Keivaziay Ball, Trevon Browner, Tyrique Dunn, Diamond Jennings, Shevin Peterson and Destiny Pope and Dolphin Dive Club members and Instructors from Dolphin Dive Center.

Because of one fun-filled day of golf, barbecue and bluegrass music, the children of Extra Special People (ESP) received $8,000 in donations to go to summer camp and $2,000 to go toward a matching grant for the capital campaign.