A morning breakfast program for Marina teens could fold without new volunteers.

Before the sun begins to rise on any given weekday, cars crowd the outside of the Marina Teen Center. Kids hop out of the vehicles, giving their parents a quick goodbye before filing into the center for its Breakfast Club, a volunteer-run morning meal service that’s open to any Marina student in sixth through 12th grade.

Since its inception in 2007, and with as few as five senior-aged volunteers, the program has helped feed 185-225 students Monday-Friday. But Marina’s Parks and and Cultural Director Terry Siegrist says that though the program is very popular with seniors, it’s become “unsustainable,” and he’s putting out the call for new volunteers.

“To put it correctly, they age out,” Siegrist says. “[Senior volunteers] can’t keep doing the work after a while.”

The work itself consists of preparing the center’s skate park and basketball court for the day, as well as setting up a full breakfast, all before 6:30am. “Marina families rely on the [Breakfast Club],” Siegrist says. “It’s one of the few places that parents know that their teenagers are going to be safe.”

It’s a community effort. There’s only a single paid staffer, and CSU Monterey Bay students serve as the center’s volunteer tutors. Their only source of funding comes from direct donations and after-school program membership fees. In short, they’re doing a lot with a little.

Siegrist notes that since the Teen Center opened seven years ago, the truancy rate at Los Arboles Middle School has dropped from 89 to 38 students, according to state Department of Education data.