Eugene weekly., January 18, 2007, Page 13, Image 13

LEAD teens (and their siblings) paint the Overpark space
A Room of Their Own
Teen center opens to anticipation, elation
BY SUZI STEFFEN
L
ast February, Terra Williams was pumped. A co-
coordinator for LEAD’s teen center committee and
a senior at Churchill Alternative High School, she
knew that the city had a lot of vacant space, specif-
ically the old fire station under City Hall, and she wanted it
for the teen center.
She and her peer Nuestro Lugar/Our Place teen center
planners, along with real estate broker John Brown and
other locally powerful downtown supporters, went into a
meeting with the city staff in late April, only to be told that
the fire station wasn’t up to code, wasn’t safe for the teens
to move into. Road block.
But the teens of LEAD (Leadership, Education,
Adventure and Direction), low-income youth who learn
leadership skills and gain support for their educational and
career goals, don’t give up easily. Nor do the youth of
Positive Youth Development’s Youth Advocacy Board or
Juventud FACETA, a group for immigrant teens. It’s not as
if the teens in these partner groups haven’t seen adversity
before or persisted in the face of daunting odds. So the teen
center committee regrouped. The Eugene City Council was,
by this time, used to hearing several teen center advocates
speak during each public comment session. The youth
reminded councilors, professionally and firmly, that the
councilors would hear them again and again ... and again ...
and again ... until finally, the city of Eugene, in cooperation
with Downtown Eugene, Inc., agreed to give Nuestro Lugar
a space.
And the space, in Oak Alley under the Overpark and
behind the Downtown Athletic Club, wasn’t exactly per-
fect. Holes in the ceiling, a concrete floor, years of being a
storage space — not, perhaps, what the teens would have
envisioned for their first center. But again, this group does
not give up when faced with obstacles. After all,
LEAD had years of experience meeting catch-
as-catch-can in apartments, Churchill
Alternative, Looking Glass’ Station 7 and
other spaces that didn’t belong to LEAD.
And partner group Juventud FACETA
didn’t exactly have its own space either,
having met in people’s homes for several
years of its existence. So what if the
space was dusty and broken? So what if
the walls were dingy? They’d get in there
and clear the space, make it welcoming for
teens, make it their own.
And, over last summer, they did. LEAD groups
and offices moved in last fall, and on Monday, Jan. 22,
Nuestro Lugar/Our Place Teen Center opens officially as a
space for low-income, multicultural and/or at-risk teens
ages 12-17. The grand opening for the public is Friday, Jan.
26 from 6 to 8 pm at 965 Oak Alley. There, everyone can
see the quiet table space in which teens do homework with
donated textbooks, the computer lab, the space for counsel-
ing and mentoring from the adults associated with Nuestro
Lugar and, of course, the couches where they can hang out,
making friends with other teens who know what it’s like not
to have any place to go.
O
n Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Caleb Pruzynski
rediscovered the feeling of having no spot to call
his own. The library was closed. School was
closed. He had been to the mall with his siblings,
where, thanks to a gift from his step-grandparents, he was
able to get lunch and buy a T-shirt. “It’s the first clothing
I’ve ever bought for myself with my own money,” he said.
But that pretty much did it for the gift, and he came down-
town for a meeting at Nuestro Lugar. Oops: It, too, was
closed. And it was cold outside — though Caleb, a 14-year-
old freshman at South Eugene High School, claimed not to
feel it. Maybe that was because of his hat, which he wore
because on his family’s farm in Walton, the pipes were
frozen; he couldn’t get any water for a shower.
When Caleb stood up to speak at the City Council meet-
ing on Jan. 8, Mayor Kitty Piercy smiled and said, “Hi,
Caleb!” He’s a polished speaker, looking his audience in the
eye and sounding like a student body president in the mak-
ing with his cadence and ability to paint a picture. He clos-
es his two-minute time with a nod and a reminder that the
youth asked the city for a bit more. “It is a beginning to
what I feel is needed — and thank you.”
Caleb and 16-year-old Elizabeth Sampedro, who attends
Churchill High, are the co-coordinators of Nuestro Lugar
now that Terra Williams has aged out of LEAD’s target
range. Williams remains a volunteer and, until her schedule
at LCC grew maddeningly busy last term, she was a paid
intern for LEAD, working on the teen center specifically.
But where does Nuestro Lugar get money for its operating
costs? Well, like most nonprofit organizations, it runs on
donations and grants. And Elizabeth, Caleb and many other
teens bear their spokesperson roles well enough that pow-
erful adults find themselves ready to donate more than they
would have thought possible.
John Brown, the real estate broker and new EWEB
board member who helped the teens interact with the city,
remembers when he first heard about the idea of a teen cen-
ter. He agreed to meet with the teens, but, he says, “I went
to the meeting with preconceived notions: I’ll kill this idea
in a minute. But when I walked out an hour later, I said I’ll
find you a home and I’ll write you a check.” Why? “Have
you met Caleb?” he asks. Caleb and Terra Williams “had a
plan, were well-spoken and were organized,” Brown says,
and they were also “honest, from the heart.”
When the city said no to the fire station, Brown was
furious. “It pisses me off!” he says. “What other youth
group isn’t afraid of being 200 feet from the police sta-
tion?” But Brown knows how to deal with reality, and when
the Overpark space came open, he looked at the space and
helped Nuestro Lugar find contractors who donated their
work (John Critelli from Essex Construction and Ethan
Hutchinson from Rainbow Valley Design and
Construction, among others) and a carpet,
donated by Imperial Floor, to warm up
the space. One of the reasons Brown
likes working with LEAD and
Nuestro Lugar is that the whole
group, including Executive
Director Maj Rafferty, Nuestro
Lugar Director D Cohen and two
other adult staff members, runs on
a shoestring budget, leveraging
what they have into direct help for
the teens. From REI and SportHill’s
clothing, equipment and time donations to
FOOD for Lane County and Papa John’s gifts
of food for meetings, the teens get what they need. “They
make do with what they have,” Brown says admiringly.
T
hat doesn’t mean that the teens don’t aspire to
more. Terra Williams, who grew frustrated at the
lack of academic counseling available to teens at
Churchill Alternative, was grateful for Cohen’s
support in applying to LCC and the UO. She’s looking for-
ward to a program, now headed up by LEAD intern Teresa
Montes, that will provide higher education counseling and
JANUARY 18, 2007 13