In a huge jump, I wanted to take a minute to write down something I've been thinking about for a few months now. Generally I like to keep all my good ideas to myself, but every now and again I throw one out there for the rest of the world to contemplate. This has absolutely nothing to do with running or working out, and everything to do with the children/young adults that I work with during the school year. As you may already be aware, there is no summer school in the city this year, due to funding issues. Unfortunately, many of the students in my school could have used the extra help, even if it was a just for 3 - 5 weeks over the summer. But on top of that, many of these students could have used the food that comes along with the program and had a safe place to go for a few hours a week.
After looking through the programs that I've heard about in various PD courses, I found that Lynn is seriously lacking in the community youth area. Sure, they have the Community health program, the library, and Centerboard, as well as places like the Y, the Boys and Girls Club, and Head start. But, what the city doesn't have, is a community youth center. Here's my proposition, should I ever get the chance to make this a reality. What I want, in short, is a safe, clean space, where the youth of Lynn can go and spend a few hours a day. In short, a Community Youth Center. Bear with me here, because what I'm thinking of is very specific. If I had the means, I would have a space available that was partitioned into 3 basic areas. 1) A quiet library/study/homework room. 2) A place to hang out with friends, talk, or play board/card games (not video games, not iPads, not cell phones, straight up board games). 3) An indoor sports area, for lack of a better term, basically a gym. In addition, an outdoor area would be nice for Fall, Spring, and Summer, to garden, hang out, and play outdoor sports. But, the outdoor space I'd be willing to pass on if needed.
Now, you may be thinking that the Y and Boys and Girls club already exist for this, so what's the point. Here's where it varies. As far as I know, all those businesses require some form of payment, whether it be money or a voucher. Not to mention, transportation is often required after school. This community youth center would be free. Yes, free. Student's could come after school for a few hours, maybe get a snack, do some homework, hang out, and then head home. All the person would have to do to enter would be to fill out an entry form once, with important information (name, address, phone, emergency contact, etc) and then sign in/out every time s/he came after that first visit. It would be open on the weekends and during vacations so that everyone had a place to go.
You see, I noticed a trend last year in what my students did after school. Get out of school, go home to a house with an older sibling or cousin, hang out until a parent got home, maybe do homework, watch tv, eat dinner, go to bed. A lot of my students had no real place to read a book, do their homework, play basketball, practice baseball, etc. Many of their parents weren't home until 5 p.m. or later, or didn't drive, or couldn't afford a house big enough for a child to have a space to do homework.
How could it possibly be free though? A space like that costs money, snacks cost money, basic operations cost money. I am well aware of that, and therein lies the problem. If I was Bill Gates rich, I'd just straight up open the place, run it for free for the city, and pay a highly qualified staff to keep it running. But I'm not Bill Gates rich. I'm not even regular person rich. All I have is an idea. So far, my way around paying staff would be to recruit the high school students that would be coming anyways, to become tutors/mentors to the elementary and middle school children. Along with that, I would recruit college students from the many schools in the area, and offer them a college credit internship for spending X amount of hours working. Ideally, college students who are studying to become teachers, counselors, or social workers, would come and volunteer their time in exchange for college credit. There could even be classes offered for those interested, basic basketball skills, crafting, drawing, whatever the attendees have an interest in really. As for snacks, I think I'd have to take the hit and shop Costco or look for companies to donate food in exchange for advertisement in the local newspapers. I don't even know if that's something they would do, but it's the best idea I've got. Other than that, all I can think of is to offer cooking classes and use the finished products as snacks! I suppose if we had an outdoor area, we could greenhouse it and grow our own fruit/veggies, and maybe that would work?
I don't know, it seems like such a good idea in my head, and even written down, it doesn't seem like it's unreachable. The problem is, for me to do it alone, it is. I couldn't even afford to rent a space for a week, let alone keep it open for a trial year. What I really need, for the first time in my life, is a business person to take this on and actually find an investor. But how do you convince someone to invest in a program that offers no ROI? At least, not in the monetary sense. Could I just hope that someone is feeling philanthropic and wants to give back to the city? Sure, I could, but I still don't know anyone from Lynn that's willing to jump on board.
At the end of the day, all I really want is for the youth of the city to have a safe place to go in order to stay off the streets.
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