A Place to Hang Out, a Place to Work : Teen Input Is Focus of New Center

Glendale High School junior Linda Wang pointed with pride at the fiberglass insulation peeking out from a portion of an unfinished ceiling.

“I installed that part,” she said. “I got fiberglass in my skin, and it kind of hurt, but it was worth it.”

Tuyoung Kim, 16, a junior at Crescenta Valley High, recounted some laborious hours she spent clearing debris.

The two students were among about 20 teen-agers who helped transform a downtown building into the Glendale Teen Support Center, a free and supervised hangout for high school students. Last Thursday evening, they showed off their work at an open house celebration.

“It looks really nice,” Kim said, glancing around the rooms with a contented smile. “It looks like we’ve come a long way as a group.”

Work on the 3,100-square-foot building, a former dental office at 115 E. Lexington Drive in the downtown business district, took about six months. Some interior walls were knocked down for a more spacious look. Outdated rugs were replaced, and black-and-white checkered flooring laid.

In place of the dental chairs, cafe-style tables and chairs, a jukebox and a soda fountain occupy the large front room.

One room is furnished with a couch, chairs and big-screen TV. It shares a wall with the recreation room, equipped with table tennis and billiard tables.

And for those who want to catch up on their homework, there’s a study room, with four computers and printers.

“I heard about the idea for the center a year ago and thought that it was great,” said Heather Amorosi, a 16-year-old junior at Crescenta Valley High School. “But I never thought it would happen.”

Until she got involved in developing the center, Amorosi said, she’d usually just stay home after school, “not doing anything productive or creative.”

She was just the kind of youth Glendale resident Sheila Ellis had in mind four years ago when she decided to develop a “safe, neutral, drug-free” place for high school students to gather.

“The idea came to me when my teen-agers were at Hoover High School, and they told me about the drugs and alcohol at the parties they would go to,” said Ellis, the mother of three girls. “I kept hearing about this environment we had for kids. A lot of kids would hang out in the 7-Eleven parking lot and I’d ask, ‘Don’t you kids have anyplace to go, just to hang out and not pay to get in?’ And there really was nothing in Glendale that fit that scenario.”

After her two oldest daughters graduated from high school, Ellis created the Youth Participation Council--a governing body of teen-agers. Together, they came up with a one-page questionnaire and handed it out to 1,500 high school students across the city.

“We were stunned by the response,” Ellis said. “We got back 1,200 of them, all filled out. And some students even wrote more on the back. It was clear we were on the track, and what we were doing was exactly what the teens wanted.”

After that came the painstaking chore of soliciting funds and finding a site. Several potential ones fell through. Finally, in April, the Lexington Drive office became available.

Ellis said the nonprofit center has no religious ties and that the teen-agers are pivotal in all decisions.

In fact, members of the youth council have played major roles in nearly every important matter, choosing the center’s programs and services, setting its hours and deciding to hire the two full-time paid staff members.

“The best thing about this is from the very start . . . Sheila has said it is for teens, by teens,” said Francois Ngyen, 17, a senior at Glendale High School and a teen-age representative on the center’s board of directors. “Before she states her opinion, she asks for our opinion.”

Ngyen and his youth council colleagues have all received training in conflict management and diversity awareness.

Psychologist Judy Yager, a youth council adviser, said the young people are not trained to counsel one another, but instead have developed skills that make them good listeners who are sensitive to the needs of other students.

Ngyen said the youth organizers agreed early on that their top priorities included making everyone who visits the center feel welcome.

To that end, the students decided to put the soda fountain near the front door so the attending soda jerk can call out a welcome to visitors and invite them to sit down and talk, offering at least one friendly face the moment a person enters.

Moreover, the students have agreed that youth council members will introduce themselves to anyone who arrives alone and invite them to play pool or table tennis.

Ngyen predicts the center will provide teen-agers a place to have fun without getting into trouble and will serve as a “haven for teens to kick back and deal with their thoughts.”

“When you’re at home and something happens with you and your parents, or your brother, you want to go someplace where people know you,” he said. “And now we’ve got a place to go. Glendale’s in desperate need of something like this.”

The city has given the teen center about $80,000 in grants over the past three years and this year is paying $30,000 of the center’s $135,000 annual budget. The rest comes from local business, corporate and private donations, foundation grants and fund-raising events.

The center will be open Monday through Friday from 3 to 8 p.m. It will eventually extend operating hours to Saturday afternoons. Those interested in donating to the center can call (213) 547-5725.