Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, for the Times Argus
Local youth will soon have more services available to them.
Elevate Youth Services intends to open a new Teen Center in Barre. And before the start of the school year, Clubhouse Commons, a new youth-focused nonprofit will open its doors.
The space, at 4 Langdon St. in Montpelier, will include a cafe, stage and youth-led workshops. The space will be open until 9 p.m. on weekdays and until midnight on weekends.
“It feels like a space that can hold young people where they’re at, in their angst and their excitement for life. All of it,” said Clubhouse Commons founder Jasmine Gruen. “Both the angstiness, the jadedness, but also this readiness to be a person and be independent and go out into the world and learn about who you are in your community.”
Elevate Youth Services, a Barre-based nonprofit, started similarly to Clubhouse Commons. Almost 50 years ago, a group of friends decided to create a drop-in center for teenagers. They eventually expanded their offerings to include counseling services, substance use programs, and services for runaway youth and foster teens.
This summer, Elevate Youth Services secured funding for a drop-in center in downtown Barre similar to the Basement Teen Center it runs in Montpelier. The center will be a place to make art and play games where youth can access services, such as free food and counseling, Ellis said. They’re still working on the details, but they expect it will be based out of the Milne Room in the Aldrich Public Library.
“They’ll be able to just come into the space and start to build relationships, start to build trust,” Ellis said. “I know that for a lot of us, the idea of seeing a counselor or a medical provider is really intimidating because you have to go to that office, and you have to fill out a bunch of forms and prove you need help.”
Later this year, Elevate will begin hiring staff for the teen center, including a director, youth engagement specialists, the adults in charge of day-to-day operations and youth peer supports.
The staff at the center will be trained to help youth who have experienced trauma, Ellis said.
“I like to think of Elevate as being a group of people who are practicing humanity with each other and helping young people feel like they really belong to this ecosystem of people learning how to be human with each other,” Ellis said.
Clubhouse Commons will operate with similar goals but use different methods. Both Ellis and Gruen said they expect Clubhouse Commons and Elevate’s programming to complement each other.
“No community can have too many resources for young people,” Ellis said. “I wish them nothing but the best. And I also think that there are opportunities to create a really strong partnership between Elevate in general, but the Basement Teen Center in particular. The Basement Teen Center and the Clubhouse Commons could share a lot of youth participants, and we could make a lot of referrals to each other.”
In addition to a cafe space, Clubhouse Commons will include three office spaces that the nonprofit plans to sublet to small businesses and nonprofits with similar values. Their first tenant, SE Home Services, provides home painting and gutter cleaning services and was started by fellow young entrepreneurs Shiloh Weiss and Emerson Colt at age 17.
The upstairs space will include a peer-to-peer workshop area. Gruen hopes the space will not only allow young people to share their passions and build relationships but also allow youth to develop their self-identity.
“We want young people to be asking themselves, who am I, and what is my place in the world?” Gruen said. “Who do I want to be, what work do I want to do, what difference do I want to make, and how does that relate to my values and my understanding of my identity?”
Besides meaningful programming, Clubhouse Commons will provide something Ellis said is lacking in the city.
“Montpelier definitely needs more late-night food,” she said.