Mayes leading youth center
The North Broad facility is now undergoing the second round of renovations in two years.
The North Broad Youth Center is getting a complete interior makeover thanks to a partnership between the Greater Refuge Ministries and North Broad Baptist Church. Rev. Terri Mayes, pastor at Greater Refuge, was appointed to succeed Brooks Collier as executive director, and is directing the makeover during the summer months prior to the return of after-school youngsters in August.
Rev. Micah Pritchett at North Broad Baptist said his members do a mission activity each summer and rotate between a foreign trip, a stateside trip and a local project. Since this was the summer for the local project, he felt it was a natural fit to help out with the project that was almost across the street from his church.
“We do an intensive weekend with a whole bunch of different projects, and we wanted to get connected with the youth center,” Pritchett said. “We’ve pulled up a bunch of carpet and upstairs we’re putting in paneling. Then we hope to paint the walls to update the building.”
The youth center at 1148 N. Broad St. was the brainchild of Rome businessman Rene Fountain.
It opened about 18 months ago. Fountain made major renovations to the interior of the building before he opened the youth center.
Mayes came on board as executive director in April. She is planning a “Rising Stars” program to begin in August. It will focus on youth between the ages of 9 and 14 who come to the center after school. “We’re going to train them in every area, social skills, politics, community service and, of course, we’re going to do reading math, science and technology,” Mayes said. “We want to give them something to do after school besides hanging out on a corner and getting in trouble.”
Mayes stressed the program is not a “bad kid” program but an “every kid” program, which seeks to bring in whites, blacks, Hispanics, all nationalities. “This is a program that we want to get all facets of the community involved with to secure our future, because the gangs are winning right now,” Mayes said.
Mayes said she is starting
the program at age 9 because younger children are too young for what she intends to introduce to them. “By 9 or 10 they’re not babies anymore, they’re not afraid of being away from home after school, and a lot of them are not in sports at school yet,” Mayes said. “We want to capture them when reading is still fun and something they want to make a part of their lives. We’re really going to concentrate on reading.”
She is taking applications at the center for scholarships through the
end of July. All students who enroll in the program will receive scholarships. Were the students and their families to have to pay, Mayes said the fee would be approximately $35 a week to attend the center after school, or close to $1,500 for the entire school year.
“We have a lot of private donors and we’ve received a lot of grants,” Mayes said.
Mayes said this past year the center was attracting between 35 and 50 youth after school, five days a week from 3 to 6 p.m.