At the risk of breaking a streak, this is a good story about Hartford. It’s about kids doing their homework, staying away from drugs and gangs, playing Scrabble and not getting pregnant.

This is about the emergence of the Boys & Girls Club in the city, one of the most positive developments in recent years. It’s a tribute to an aggressive board and a remarkably dynamic executive director, Ken Darden.

This organization, which was called the Boys Club until 1990, has 3,000 facilities and 3 million members across the country. Famous alumni include Bill Clinton, Michael Jordan, Denzel Washington and Jennifer Lopez, among many others. It shouldn’t have had to “emerge” in Hartford. It was founded here.

A LOOK BACK

The organization traces its history to the Dashaway Club, founded by several civic-minded Hartford women in 1860. It was the “first effort to provide structured, daily, out-of-school activities for disadvantaged boys,” according to a research paper by Trinity College graduate student Elizabeth Gottung.

The first Club was followed by others here and in other cities. They formed a national federation, the Federated Boys Club, in 1906, headed by legendary urban reformer Jacob Riis.

The Club survived in Hartford, though it didn’t exactly prosper. For decades it was a sleepy, off-the-screen youth group, with two sites, one near the Bowles Park housing project and another near the old Charter Oak Terrace project.

NEW BEGINNINGS

The Club’s profile began to rise four years ago when a new Club opened across Broad Street from Trinity. The building is cute; unfortunately it is way too small.

About the time the Trinity building opened, Darden arrived from headquarters in Atlanta with a mandate to get the Hartford Club moving. He has. The Club now has seven sites serving 2,100 school-age kids, a vast increase. The annual budget has gone from $600,000 to more than $2 million. He has 50 employees, 20 of them full-time.

The only things keeping Darden from serving more children are space and resources, and he’s working on them. After Herculean work by a community group, and with support from the Asylum Hill Congregational Church, the Club is acquiring a site on Sigourney Street for a major new facility in Asylum Hill, where kids desperately need more activities. The $6 million project will get underway next year.

PEOPLE AND PLACES

On Wednesday, I toured four of the sites with Darden and board member Dick Brainerd. Darden, a youthful-looking 49, is a bright, engaging guy with a quick sense of humor and a good eye for talent. The people running these programs are terrific.

We started at the Trinity site, where area director Angel Huertas said some programs have hundreds of kids on waiting lists. Students at the nearby Learning Corridor middle school have their own Club in the school, directed by a vivacious young woman named Rachel Rivera.

The Club’s partnership with Trinity has not only yielded a building, use of facilities and a lot of volunteers, it’s now even producing staff people. Rivera was a Trinity student volunteer who graduated in June. She was going to go to law school, but decided instead to go to work for the Boys & Girls Club.

PROBLEM-SOLVING PROGRAMS

It’s impressive to watch the youngsters file in with their backpacks, sit at a table and quietly begin their homework. That’s the first afternoon activity, a 3 to 4 p.m. period called “Power Hour.” Then they head for other programs, programs that have been carefully thought out.

For example, we all know that teen pregnancy is a huge problem in the city. The Boys & Girls Club goes right at it with a program called SMART Moves, which teaches girls and boys to resist premature sexual activity, and to stay away from alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs. Darden has set a goal: The teen pregnancy rate among his members will be no more than one-fifth the rate in the city at large.

He’s got programs in reading, creative writing and computer technology to help kids stay in school. The goal is that a minimum of 85 percent of the members will graduate from high school.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

The Club also emphasizes leadership and community service, and even uses the fun activities for a purpose. “We teach them how to play games correctly, follow the rules, use good sportsmanship,” Huertas said. The activities run from flag football to modern dance, and indoor games that challenge the kids such as Scrabble, my favorite board game.

Darden and his staff have set up shop where the kids are. They just opened a Club in the drug-riddled Dutch Point housing project, headed by veteran youth worker Jackie Bethea. Not everyone could have pulled this off, but Bethea has gotten drug dealers to halt business while the club is open. And kids troop in with their backpacks as the police cars zip around, sit down and start their homework. If she isn’t saving their lives I’ve lost my uncanny ability to state the obvious.