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The Youth Centre one year on
?As its director, Vanessa Slater, reports on page 18 of this issue (and as Roger Varley reports from Township Council on page 12), the Uxbridge Youth Centre has made remarkable progress in just one year at its location on Brock Street. And Ms. Slater, of course, deserves a great deal of the credit for that progress, attracting a steady flow of volunteers and coming up with a wonderful variety of programming that keeps young people popping their heads into the Centre on a regular basis.
The Board of the Youth Centre is to be congratulated on sticking it out through some rough initial obstacles to create a true home for the youth of the town, for choosing such effective staff, and for achieving the charitable status which will allow them to more easily attract funds to expand the Centre in the future.
Because expand it must. At present, it can serve only a small percentage of its potential client base. Ms. Slater’s figure of 2500 youth served over the first year breaks down to only 50 per week, an average of only 10 per school day. If the current figure is double that, it still means a very small proportion of the roughly 2500 Uxbridge youngsters from Grades 7 to 12 are being attracted to the facility. And how many of that group are of the “at risk” type which the Centre was primarily intended to help in the first place?
Without a survey of some sort at this stage in the UYC’s life, it’s hard to know exactly where their clients are coming from, and who they are, although the Centre’s regular clientele are probably very well known to the staff. It’s a pretty intimate place.
Just how intimate can be dramatically illustrated by the Centre’s Friday night concerts. By the time you give the band some space, and bring in the adult volunteers, there’s not a whole lot of room for the youthful music fans themselves. They inevitably spill out onto the street, a recurring problem for a downtown Centre.
Certainly, the Brock Street location was only ever intended by the Centre Board as a starting point. As Ms. Slater points out, staff are involving their current clients in planning for where a larger Centre might be, and what it might consist of. The Township’s ownership of the space, and the Durham Police’s extremely part-time residency, made the store-front an attractive place to begin. But certainly everyone, Board, staff and youth alike, have realized quickly how limiting it is. The Centre has used other locales for some of its programs, but as a core home, it needs something much, much bigger.
It’s tempting to suggest Kennedy House, but to be a true drop-in centre, it needs to be close to the high school. In the long run, perhaps another Township facility (such as Uxpool or the Seniors Centre) could relocate to Kennedy House, and give up its current home to the UYC. Or perhaps the Curling Club could join forces with the UYC to raise funds for a new curling rink on the Kennedy House grounds, and sell its current home to the Township for use as a youth centre.
In the meantime, perhaps the Centre could move to a new, larger space near the high school, something currently vacant. There is no shortage of empty spaces, both on and off Brock Street, that with a little imagination, could fill the bill. The Centre is certainly to be applauded on its initial small steps. But to take larger ones, it needs some room.
