Johnson on running, community support of center
The Hamilton County Youth Center has been reopened for six months to middle and high school students and Paul Johnson has been busy with keeping the operation running as a hot spot of teenage activity.
Johnson recently outlined the needs and performance of the Youth Center, which continues to attract a wide crowd.
“Attendance has been fantastic,” Johnson said. “On middle school nights, we’re averaging about 45 kids at night. We’ve had upwards of 75, which is great and everyone’s been really good. We haven’t really had very many issues, just a lot of learning curves as far as what works and what doesn’t.”
Johnson went into more of what those learning curves were.
“Learning curves as far as what all to do before we open, so everything’s ready to go,” Johnson explained as food and electronics require a few minutes of prep time. “Entering people into our systems, so that they can check in and out. How to reach out to people to let them know about events that are coming or weekends where we’re going to be closed. We were using like I think Chimp Mail (Mailchimp) is what it’s called, to send email blasts that show us how many people opened it.”
Except for national holiday weekends such as Thanksgiving or Christmas, nights for middle and high school are Tuesdays and Thursdays in the summer; Fridays and Saturdays for the school year. Johnson stated the differences between mellow high school nights and wild middle school nights.
“Middle school nights are controlled chaos when you have 40 to 50 kids running around doing a dozen different activities,” he related. “You stay busy. We always have four staff members on middle school nights and then we’re having three to four volunteers as well on those nights, so there’s plenty of supervision.
“Our high school nights, we’re averaging about 10 to 20 people a night, so it’s quite a bit slower, but high school night is more personal, where you’re having conversations with them,” he added.
As to enforcing the rules, Johnson said there was much success in keeping children mindful of them without too much interference.
“There’s been a couple challenges,” he elaborated. “I’ve been lenient for the most part until I see repeated instances. We always tell the kids ‘Hey, remember, keep your hands to yourself. You can’t have food or drink in here.’ But after reminding some kids multiple times, it turns into ‘Hey, if you do this again, you’ve got to go home for the night.’ But, overall, we’ve had very few kids break the rules.”
There have also been other positive reactions such as children not just gravitating to the numerous video game systems and VR headsets, but participating in billiards and ping-pong as well, with Johnson deciding to keep both.
“We weren’t sure if people were going to use the ping-pong table very much,” he said. “So we were kind of planning ahead to eliminate one of them and put something else in, but they’re both in constant use all the time.”
Besides the regular events, the Youth Center also did summer programs on Wednesdays to have special events and teach some life skills.
“We did a free movie every week,” he reported. “We paired with the Extension office to have a meal here on Wednesdays for kids who signed up, who learned how to make a healthy meal. There was a lesson plan and they got to make their own meal and eat it.”
The food choices include free nachos, popcorn and water, with $1 charged for candy and flavored drinks. There are also special meals nights with donations such as hot dogs and pizza from Casey’s and Pizza Hut.
“I talked with Pizza Hut and they’re giving us a deal on pizzas, so we don’t have to pay full menu price for the pizza,” Johnson said. “So that’s their donation to us, which is fantastic. And then we’ve had some people drop off a bunch of hot dogs, so we brought in a grill. Last week, we grilled hot dogs, had chips for the kids, and that went over really well.”
Johnson stated that he hopes to have more food options, but said he would need community support to make that happen.
“Yeah, food options is really important to me as far as having food here,” he voiced. “I’m planning on reaching out to more people in the community to ask them to donate specifically towards that because there’s still lots of families in this town who are struggling. You don’t see them, but they’re there. I think that even offering one meal a week to the kids that are here can be very helpful to those families. We’ve had several businesses and individuals reach out and donate about $250 a week so that we can get dinner here on Friday and Saturday nights for the kids.”
Also Johnson explained that funds he received to pay for operations and renovations, part of which was covered by the Go Big GIVE fundraiser with about $28,000 to the Youth Center/12th Street Cinema fund.
“This year, we really put the focus on the Youth Center to kind of make sure it was up and ready because we did $40,000 worth of renovations as far as new TVs and new game systems. We raised right at $50,000 between grants, Go Big GIVE and personal donations.”
Another key part of the Youth Center is the volunteers which include community members and high school students from the National Honor Society and Future Business Leaders of America.
“We’ve been doing pretty well on volunteers,” he stated. “We’ve had several people from the community come back pretty frequently. We recently paired up with the high school with National Honor Society and FBLA. They are having high schoolers come in on middle school nights, volunteer, and they’ve been really good. We’ve seen them playing games with the middle schoolers and going out playing basketball with them.”
Johnson emphasized that including high school student volunteers on middle school nights benefits both groups.
“I think that showing high schoolers that volunteering is more than just supervising, that you can have an impact, and a positive impact can lead to more of these youth centers opening up other places (in the future), or some of them coming back and saying, ‘Hey, I really enjoyed this and I want to be a part of it.’ The middle schoolers get to kind of see not an adult, but an older kid. There’s not so much distance,” he said describing the sentiment he observes between the groups. “Like, ‘Even though you’re younger than me, you still have value. And I’m here because you have value and I want you to have a good time and have this space open forever.’”
Johnson also spoke on his policy of letting volunteers choose the areas they want to look over as an important part of the program.
“I think that’s key,” he said. “I think that letting the volunteers do something that they’re comfortable with will lead to them coming back to volunteering more and leading to them enjoying volunteering.”
Johnson also laid out how community members can contribute to the Youth Center. Volunteering can be done by reaching out to the center on Facebook, the website hcyouthcenter.com or emailing paul@hcyouthcenter.com. The website can also be used to donate to the organization and those who donate can email Johnson for a tax receipt.
Johnson stated the intention of getting community members involved in more programs starting next summer, noting that he is fielding ideas from the community, which has given the Youth Center a positive reception.
“When I first toyed with the idea of reopening it, and kind of revamping it, there was a little hesitation on my part, just because I hadn’t seen it used in some time, but I know that it was the right thing to do and that it is important to the community,” he concluded. “It’s important to the kids. I think it’s important to their families. I think that our game plan moving forward will keep it open for a very long time.”
The Youth Center will have an open house for the community Dec. 9 from 6-10 p.m.