Since opening our doors on Monday September 14
th for the after-school program this year, the Kingswood Youth Center has had a wonderful fall season!
Programming has been full of our usual favorite activities, such as cooking, arts and crafts, field trips to the Humane Society, and spending time outside on the Cotton Valley Trail and recreational equipment in front of the KYC facility. We've also been enjoying the Life Skills Program picking up where we left off last spring, which has helped many of our teen members build resumes, practice interview skills, explore future plan ideas, and even get jobs in town for the summer!
One of our newest initiatives with programming this year has been to encourage our teen members to lead activities more often- whether it's a game, craft, project, or even field trips. This has had an obvious impact on morale and team building for our teen members, and we are proud to see them practice their ideas and leadership skills!
We also held an Open House at the end of September, and hope to continue holding them every so often to help increase our presence in the community. We want to be sure that parents and community members are familiar with the KYC and how their teens could participate. Having Open Houses allows us to invite people to see the facility, meet our staff and volunteers, and learn more about our philosophy and what we do. Stay tuned for more info regarding our next one!
In other news, we are continuing to co-host Teen Nights with Appalachian Mountain Teen Project! We held our first one in October, and are gearing up for our next one on Friday November 20
th.
This has been a great collaborative project for us, and we are pleased to be servicing more teens and opening our doors to local youth more often. Our October Teen Night was all about Halloween: carving pumpkins, wearing costumes, and playing games. For November, we will be having a Thanksgiving-themed dinner and a movie night featuring the new Jurassic World movie. We can't wait to see you there!
Last but not least, we want to congratulate Zachary Porter on his NEW position with the KYC as our Program Director! Zachary has been with KYC since 2011 as our Kitchen Facilitator, and we couldn't be happier to have him as part of our program team.
Cheers to a wonderful fall season and positive growth for our teens!
