March 2, 2016
Building a better summer Around Town
3
New justice center for O’Fallon
Around Town
8
Liberty Dance wins state
Submitted photos Blueprint4SummerSTL can be accessesed on a mobile device as shown here as well as a computer. (Inset) A Blueprint4SummerSTL employee accesses the Blueprint4SummerSTL website from a personal computer.
Build-A-Bear CEO behind app that helps St. Charles families connect with summer programs
School
By Brett Auten
WSD superintendent awarded
For a parent, the sound can be likened to nails on a chalkboard. It’s summertime and the daily, whiny drone of, “what are we doing today?” is coming from school-aged children everywhere. A local company has made it a cinch to answer that question. Blueprint4SummerSTL has made local summer activities accessible for all kids with its free web-based mobile app that offers the most comprehensive and easily accessible summer program database for parents across the region. The app makes summer in St. Louis productive for children and stress-free for parents. The resource is accessible from anywhere on any device at blueprint4summer.com. Blueprint4SummerSTL first launched in February 2015 and quickly became a resource for parents seeking educational, engaging and fun activities for their children during the summer months. By aggregating information about area programs, Blueprint4SummerSTL gives all parents access to local summer offerings. New this year, Blueprint4SummerSTL will help even more families find camps by expanding in scope,
including parts of Illinois, and listing more camps within St. Louis City and County, St. Charles County and Jefferson County. Blueprint4SummerSTL is the brainchild of Maxine Clark, CEO of the Clark-Fox Family Foundation and founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop. Clark is determined to keep last year’s momentum going and anticipates the app being a parents’ number one resource as it continues to expand in reach this year. “Our purpose was to make it easy for all parents to gain access to these camps,” Clark said. “Parents were hungry for this. In our first year of operation, Blueprint4SummerSTL presented more than 3,500 local summer camps and activities that was accessed by parents all across the greater St. Louis area. Blueprint4SummerSTL is the most robust program information database – and best of all it’s completely free for all families to use. As the app grows its footprint, our goal is to make sure all children have equal opportunity to enroll in these important and impactful summer programs.” Using the app, a parent or guard-
ian can quickly find programs and resources that may work for the needs of their family and each individual child. Activities can be searched based on any number of preferences such as age, gender, interests, cost and zip code – even special considerations such as sessions for special needs students or gifted students, those offering before and after care, or that have scholarships available. The app provides information about day camps, sleep-away camps and sports camps; art, music and science programs; and academic enrichment courses in STEM. “The fact that we have this granular search engine is what separates us,” Programs Manager Allie Cicotte said. “Dads, moms, and children like using it. It is one of the easiest search engines to use. There were 72,000 searches on Blueprint4SummerSTL in its first year, and 64 percent of users chose highly personalized, targeted searches with four or more criteria. That’s how we know just how valuable this app is for parents. Blueprint4SummerSTL is the only summer camp database that allows users to generate highly personalSee APP on page 2
Recipe
The perfect blend
8
11
Movie: “Eddie the Eagle”
FREE Online Subscription at mycnews.com