Courtesy of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater St. Louis
On any given day, public spaces like the Saint Louis Galleria and streets of the Delmar Loop—amid the shoppers and passersby—become home to cliques of teenagers. The school day ends around 3 p.m., and rather than return home to binge-watch Netflix, many teenagers congregate here to swap the latest gossip, making laps around the mall or in the sidewalk chairs of one of the Loop's eateries. They just want “spaces they can call their own,” says Flint Fowler, president of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater St. Louis. And with the organization’s Teen Center of Excellence, which opened Thursday at 9200 West Florissant in Ferguson, he hopes to give them that, in a “safe environment, with structured activities, where they’ll be encouraged to be creative and explore things.”
Most Boys & Girls Clubs facilities house the organization’s full age range of 6–18 in one complex. Some have different wings or rooms for different ages, to cater to specific age groups. But the Ferguson complex, intentionally located amid four school districts, is one of the first facilities to focus solely on teenagers. It will be open after school, primarily from 2 or 3 p.m. until 9 p.m., Monday through Fridays, with some Saturdays and Sundays (depending on the season and special programming).
The 26,856-square-foot facility will have a ratio of 1 staff member to every 16 children (plus a center director), with additional staff, volunteers, and occasional visitors from local universities or potential places of employment to host workshops or lessons. Kids can use the facility with a $25 purchase of the organization's yearly membership, though Fowler cites scholarships for kids who might not be able to pay that.
Rendering courtesy of the Girls & Boys Clubs of Greater St. Louis
The center's amenities are both fun and strategic. A nutrition education center will be led by a staffer with a restaurant background to teach the young adults how nutrition impacts their health but also introduce the idea of careers in the hospitality industry. An outdoor garden and indoor garden tower (to be used during winter months) encourages the members to grow their own produce.
“I think it gives us a sense of responsibility. You've got a plant, you've got to water,” Fowler says. “They decide what gets planted; they’re understanding what kinds of things will survive in our St. Louis environment and weather conditions.”
Members will be immersed in visual, musical, and performance arts through a theater, drama room, and music studio. Teens can grow other interests in areas such as the intellectual commons, office space, and innovation center, where students can receive academic tutoring or work on school projects.
In addition to those spaces, the programs run the gamut of sessions about health and wellness (including yoga and gym time); education and workforce development (including college tours, ACT/SAT prep, tutoring, job readiness, internships, and summer employment); STEAM education (including lessons about visual and performing arts, coding, app creation, robotics); and leadership and civic engagement (members can partake in community service, character programs, advocacy training).
To plan the center, a research team mapped out the club's programming points after reviewing information pulled from the organization’s national teen conference as well as from interviews with club members who were asked questions like: “What do you want to see? What do you enjoy? What makes you happy?” Fowler adds another, “What is needed to help make kids successful?” The hope is to keep kids engaged by providing opportunities that they wouldn’t get a chance to do if they’d just gone home or out with friends.
But the mission goes further. The Clubs wants to create connection, “or a chance to meet other young people and certainly benefit from positive relationships with caring adults who can serve as mentors or role models who guide and direct; help them understand the road to success or the pitfalls that they had and how they got through them; how to recover from bad decisions,” Fowler says.
In a story from SLM's Ferguson, Five Years Later package, writer Mike Fitzgerald spoke with Ferguson teens about the forthcoming Clubs facility. "It's going to make a difference," one told him, "because a lot of black kids have the opportunity to go in there and fix themselves before they lose their life to the streets."
Fowler certainly hopes so. "I hope the teens find it as a place of refuge," he says, "that they feel safe here. That they know there are people throughout the region who are dedicated to their well-being, who are investing in not only them having good teen years but laying the foundation for a promising future."
