The Boys & Girls Club of Bandera County is a proud affiliate of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America www.bgca.org .  The Boys and Girls Clubs of America is a national movement spanning 147 years, that serves more than 4.8 million youth with trained professional staff members in 4,300 neighborhood-based facilities in all 50 states plus Puerto Rica, the Virgin Islands, and military bases around the world.  Originally formed by a group of women in Hartford, CT, in 1860, as a positive alternative to the streets for boys, it became an affliliated organization in 1906 in Boston, MA, with the joining of 53 clubs to become the Federated Boys Club.  Having become the Boys Club of America in 1931, it was chartered by the United States Congress in 1956.  The national organization officialy became the Boys & Girls Club of America in 1991.