BY DUSICA SUE MALESEVIC | Anthony Rebolledo wouldn’t miss a week of the youth program that was taking place at the Fulton Houses Community Center.
The 15-year-old, who has lived in the Fulton Houses his entire life, started participating in Young Life — an international nonprofit Christian ministry that provides programming for youth — around four years ago.
He heard about it through his friends, and he liked the way the program brought kids in the neighborhood together, as well as the opportunity to learn about God.
“We had a lot of space and a pool table,” said Rebolledo in a phone interview.
Recently, however, the program has taken place outside or at churches because it is no longer allowed to use the space at Fulton Houses Community Center. For two nights each week, Young Life was running their program there.
“We come into neighborhoods and provide faith-based mentoring style programs for kids, for high school and middle school kids particularly,” explained Chris Mills, Young Life’s Chelsea area director for over four years, in a phone interview.
In the summer of 2012, before Hurricane Sandy hit, Mills and the organization’s staff had meet several kids and their parents from the Fulton Houses through basketball tournaments and other neighborhood initiatives, he said. In the aftermath of the storm, Young Life helped out and served the community, said Mills.
Miguel Acevedo, president of the Fulton Houses Tenants Association, approached Young Life after Sandy, to provide a weekly youth program for both middle and high schoolers, said Mills.
The program, which started in spring 2013, was run in the Tenant Association’s offices — but it quickly outgrew the space.
In a phone interview, Acevedo said it was a “positive program,” and “you can’t have twenty, thirty teenagers in a small office.”
Mills said he approached Hudson Guild to see if they could utilize space at the Fulton Houses Community Center.
“They were gracious to us and gave us space there to do our programming,” Mills said. “We told them what our needs were and what we were doing. They donated [what] they call the game room. Basically, a room with a pool table, and it [had] enough seating for how many kids we had.”
Starting the fall of 2014, Young Life had two nights at the center. On Mondays, those in middle school would meet for Wyldlife Club, and on Thursdays, the Young Life Club for those in high school would meet. Both ran from 6 to 8 p.m. Mills said about 25 kids participated in each program, noting that one of the taglines for the club is “a party with a purpose.”
“We really want to provide a fun, safe environment for kids to come,” he said.
The free program provides dinner for participants. They play games, participate in skits, and, at the end, discuss a story from the Bible and how it relates to their lives, said Mills.
“We’re also very adamant [that] everyone can find a place in Young Life,” he said. “You don’t have to be a Christian to come to our program. We want them to be a part of what we’re doing. At the end of the day, we want kids lives to be better.”
In the early part of June, Hudson Guild informed Mills that they would no longer be able to use the space. Hudson Guild had let them use the space for free, which Mills called a “big gift.”
Initially, Mills said he was told they couldn’t use the space because the kids were rowdy and out of control.
“At that point it was about [the] kids’ behavior and [we] did not receive any information about the lack of supervision or leadership of the program,” he said.
Ken Jockers, executive director of Hudson Guild, disputes this.
“Our concern was not about the young people,” said Jockers in a phone interview. “We work with young people every day. We know that young people are energetic and full of energy. Our concern was the program’s ability to productively engage young people in groups.”
Later, Mills said the language switched in order to reflect that it was not necessarily the kids’ behavior, as much as a lack of leadership. He said Jockers has not seen the program in action.
Jockers said Young Life could not use the space because “we did not think that the program had sufficient structure or supervision to adequately engage young people.”
He did not answer whether he went to check out the program himself.
Jockers did say, “Based on the information that I received, I made the decision. If the assertion is that I haven’t seen the program in action, my response to that is that for more than a hundred years, Hudson Guild has been running multiple programs all around the neighborhood. We operate out of nearly twenty locations running dozens of programs and serving thousands of people every year.”
He added, “Chris Mills’ program is not a program of Hudson Guild. They’re an organization that wanted to use space in the facilities that we run and we made the determination that it wasn’t a good fit for us. We’re not saying they shouldn’t run their program…They asked us for space in a building that we’re responsible for, and we said no.”
Mills said people who run the program have three months of training, take a test at the end to make sure procedures and policies are understood, undergo a background check, and must provide two letters of recommendation.
They are looking for another space, but the search is difficult because Chelsea is expensive, Mills said later in an email.
“I’m really not trying to fight [Hudson Guild]. I’m trying to fight for the kids,” said Mills. “At the end of the day, I want us to be back in the space working alongside Hudson Guild.”
