New Teen Center Brings Promise for Easton Youth

The Boys and Girls Club of Easton’s new teen center will address the needs and challenges of teens with activities that cultivate ethics, civility, and citizenship. Called “The Club,” the center, which opened in December at 1101 Northampton St., will help Easton youth make the transition from childhood to young adulthood by nurturing and developing skills necessary for successful lives.

The center plans a grand opening in mid-February, according to Dean Young, executive director of the Boys and Girls Club. “The teen center will allow us to encourage the personal development and creativity of young people, many of whom are disadvantaged, by surrounding them with resources to advance them and expose them to positive mentors and the benefits of higher education in a safe haven,” Young says.

The center has a dance floor, billiards table, television lounge, and more. The floor-plan is open, helping foster the strengthening of community skills by teaching teens how their activities affect others in a shared space. The teens will be responsible for developing rules to govern how the space will be used.

Lafayette is among several community partners, including the Boy Scouts of America, Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley, Gephardt Enterprises, Hope Unseen, Lehigh University, MCS Industries, Route 222 Corridor Project, Two Rivers Health and Wellness Foundation, United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley, West Ward Neighborhood Partnership, and Young Family, among others.

The need for facilities and programming geared specifically for teens is a concept recognized by the national Boys and Girls Club. The Boys and Girls Club of Easton will use the Boys and Girls Club of America’s national training staff to educate staff and volunteers to implement proven strategies in working with teens in order to combat youth joining gangs and involving themselves in other dangerous and destructive activities.

What distinguishes Easton’s Club from other Boys and Girls Club teen center initiatives nationally is a focus on the humanities – the visual arts, dance, and intentional group dialogue grounded in civility and citizenship – and Lafayette is playing the lead role in developing the center’s humanities-focused programming.

“By utilizing arts and humanities activities Lafayette’s students and faculty can help strengthen the confidence and abilities of teenagers living in challenging circumstances,” says Gladstone Fluney Hutchinson, vice president of the Boys and Girls Club’s board of directors and associate professor of economics and business at Lafayette.

Jim Toia, director of Lafayette’s Community-Based Teaching program, based at the Williams Visual Arts Building, and Ed Kerns, Clapp Professor of Art and the visual arts building’s founding director, have been instrumental in framing the role of art in building the cultural and social capital of the community. The center’s creative humanities-focused programming will include Lafayette students as teachers and mentors for the teens.

“We are very excited to have this chance to further serve the community and be of service to the Boys and Girls Club of Easton and we think this relationship is a great opportunity for our students to work as art educators and mentors to young aspiring minds. This is what civic engagement and town-gown relationships are really all about,” says Toia, who is also director of the Grossman Gallery in the Williams Visual Arts Building.

“The kids at the center will gain confidence, find new avenues of ability and creativity, and most important, discover a level of self-worth they may not have had an opportunity to uncover in their previous learning experiences,” Toia says. “And our undergraduates will have the very real experience of teaching in the community on a long-term basis, gaining a sense of ownership in the success of the program and forming bonds with these young students.”

Coordinating service-learning projects staffed by Lafayette students is Bonnie Winfield, director of the College’s Landis Community Outreach Center.

“It’s about sharing space so the teens in the community and the college students can learn from each other,” says Winfield. “By creating spoken word performances, painting murals, and working on civil education, they create a better community for Easton. Lafayette College is part of that whole Easton community, so it creates a better place for everybody. Most important, it’s about creating a better sense of place. One of the key components of gang prevention is for teens and young children to have attachment to the community. That’s what this teen center is about – giving them a sense of belonging.”

The Landis Center’s Kids in the Community (KIC) program will add a component devoted to older youth called Teens in the Community. Danielle Bero ’07(Astoria, N.Y.), who designed her own major of creative mediums and social justice, is leading KIC’s efforts with the teen center.

“After participating in the Pre-Orientation Service Program, I worked with a lot of the older kids involved with KIC,” she explains. “After revamping the KIC program to add more structure and creative arts, it became harder and harder to find projects that could include the entire range of the kids ages 6-17. So once we heard about the idea for the teen center, we thought it would be a perfect way for us to split the group and be able to work more effectively and exclusively with the older kids.”

Helping Bero organize art, spoken word, and performance based activities are psychology major Emily Giannotta ’09 (Simsbury, Conn.), mathematics major Joanna Norelli ’08 (Langhorne, Pa.), and economics and business majors Brian Rotmil ’09 (Morganville, N.J.) and Julia Sorkin ’09 (Whippany, N.J.). They will lead activities for teens 4-6:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday each week.

Lafayette also is donating computers to the teen center. Many of the art programs will incorporate graphics and digital art-making, allowing teens to explore their creativity while building essential skills.

In addition, Lafayette’s Class of 2010 has adopted the teen center as its class project. Guest speakers from Lafayette will visit the teen center to speak on the importance of topics such as creativity, sensitivity, critical thinking, and respecting others.