City Youth Center Helping At-Risk Teens
Mar 01, 2007 - Community Events
March 1, 2007 - The City of West Palm Beach is celebrating the opening of the Northwood Youth Empowerment Center, a facility to help at-risk teens grow into responsible adults. The facility will offer the teens job training, mentoring, career counseling, and more, all in a safe, fun, supervised environment. The center is part of the county-wide Youth Violence Prevention project.
“This center will create opportunities for teens who might not otherwise have them,” said West Palm Beach Mayor Lois J. Frankel. “Keeping teens productive and active will help them stay on the path to responsible adulthood, and help us combat our area’s youth violence crisis.”
“This Youth Empowerment Center is the first of its kind in Palm Beach County,” said Department of Parks and Recreation Director Christine Thrower. “This center will enable us to reach out to at-risk teens in our City and make a difference in our community.”
The Northwood Youth Empowerment Center has already begun providing a wide range of activities and personal development opportunities for teens. In addition to being a safe place for teens to participate in activities and programs, the center’s primary goal is to help teens get good, sustainable jobs and solid careers. Programs will include career advising and planning, job training, tutoring and homework assistance, mentoring, gang resistance and education, community outreach, recreational opportunities, and much more.
The Youth Empowerment Center has been developed by and will be staffed by City of West Palm Beach Department of Parks and Recreation workers. The City Commission has budgeted $1 million for youth centers throughout the City, and has received more than $660,000 in supportive funding from Palm Beach County through the Criminal Justice Commission.
In order to help provide quality, attractive programming for the Youth Center, the City has contracted with, or is negotiating with, nearly a dozen private service providers. The providers include Workforce Alliance, which will offer professional seminars, workshops, and job fairs to the teens, and also will offer access to their job database. The Children’s Services Council, Junior Achievement, DeGeorge Boys and Girls Clubs, Teen Temps, Taylor Productions, the Urban League of Palm Beach County, Let’s Help Inc., and Big Brothers Big Sisters will all be involved in programming the youth center and helping make it a success. Services provided will include mentoring, gang prevention, audio and video production techniques, family-strengthening, and more.
The City of West Palm Beach is also working to open a second Youth Empowerment Center at Gaines Park in the coming months. More centers for at-risk teens are also in the planning stages.
For Additional Information:
West Palm Beach Public Information Officer @
(561) 822-1433 / 822-1411 or webpio@wpb.org