POCATELLO — Cole Chevrolet has donated $5,000 to the Boys & Girls Club of Portneuf Valley as part of an ongoing effort to support community-building initiatives, and to help the organization launch this fall at a Pocatello elementary school.

The automotive company awarded the check to the local Boys & Girls Club on March 23 during a Pocatello-Chubbuck Chamber of Commerce event at the Cole Chevrolet on Yellowstone Avenue.

Jean Haneke, one of the founders of the Boys & Girls Club of Portneuf Valley, told the Idaho State Journal the money from Cole will contribute greatly to the cost of getting the program up and running this fall. Haneke said the club will start by offering services in Syringa Elementary School in Pocatello.

“We’re very, very excited,” she said. “We decided to go into an elementary school to start, just to get everything in place and then we’ll be able to expand from there, but the need is really there in our elementary schools because there are after school programs in only seven our 14 elementary schools. We just hope we can help fill some of that need.”

Haneke called support from the community — like the $5,000 donation from Cole Chevrolet — “tremendously important” to the work of launching a Boys & Girls Club in the Pocatello area.

“It’s just been really heartwarming to get the support of the community, our businesses, our mayors, both of them are very, very supportive, and Pocatello-Chubbuck School District 25,” she said. “We couldn’t be doing this without their support.”

The idea to start an official Boys & Girls Club in the Pocatello area came more than a year ago, and the project has been steadily progressing since. When the club launches at Syringa Elementary, it will be able to serve up to 50 children, offering them a variety of activities and services.

“We want to start small, and we will have classes that include sports, arts, education, character building,” Haneke said. “We just basically want to help children finds things that are really interesting to them so they can work toward a secondary education, be it two years or four years, and just keep them moving in a positive direction and giving them support.”

Art Beery, general manager of Cole Chevrolet, said the support he’s seen from the community toward the Boys & Girls Club has been “tremendous.”

“I’m going to assume it’s not going to stop here because I think that the individual donations have been tremendous too,” Beery said. “Whatever it takes, this is great. This is all part of our community, and this is what’s defining us.”