By teens, for teens. That’s the spirit of a new gathering place and web and advocacy community that just launched in Providence, R.I.
The Hub bills itself as “a city-wide approach to building sustainable, high-quality out-of-school-time opportunities for high school-aged youth.”
With support from the respected Providence After School Alliance, the Hub offers high school students a place to go after school (a converted garage near the city’s new career academy), as well as a website designed to link young people to job opportunities and activities.
Teens came up with the plans for the Hub and what it would need to address; they’ll also use the Hub to focus their political energies on problems that need solving. For now, the teens involved have identified access to affordable public transportation as their rallying point. Poor transit makes it harder for many youths to stick with school or to pursue decent jobs, they say.
I’ll look forward to hearing more about this project. It sounds like a great opportunity to bring people—particularly young people—together.