In 2023, The Place Teen Program Coordinator brought Girls on the Run to Perry Browne Intermediate School, where 19 third, fourth, and fifth graders learned about empowerment, empathy, and confidence while also staying active. (Photo by Sarah Genter)

NORWICH — The Place has spent another year furthering their mission to “provide programs and support to youth and families, helping them realize their full potential as they become responsible contributing members of society.”

The 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization located at 22 East Main Street in Norwich offers a wide variety of youth programming to the Chenango County area, including childcare, after school programs, youth training classes, youth employment opportunities, and much more.

The organization spent 2023 providing quality childcare and programming to the community while also updating their building, forming and strengthening community partnerships, implementing new programs, and planning for the future.

Programs for all ages

The biggest way The Place supports local youth is through their numerous programs available to kids and teens in Chenango County.

The Place’s KIDS Program is there for youth aged five to 12 years old, and provides before- and after-school programming during the school year, and childcare during school vacations and the summer months.

Children in the KIDS Program are provided with healthy snacks, homework assistance, fun learning activities, field trips, arts and crafts, games, and visits from educators and other organizations, including the Chenango County Historical Society, 4-H, Eat Smart New York, and more. They also have access to an outdoor playground and basketball court.

Additionally, The Place reaches out to local schools to get involved in the lives of kids who may not be in the KIDS Program. This past year, The Place Teen Program Coordinator Julie Dealing spent several weeks with 19 Perry Browne Intermediate School third, fourth, and fifth graders for Girls on the Run.

Girls on the Run is a youth development program for girls in third through eighth grade that teaches empowerment, empathy, and positive self advocacy.

In addition to teaching these skills, Dealing, along with three other volunteer coaches, spent the season working with the girls to prepare for an end-of-season 5k in Oneonta. The Place Executive Director Sharon Vesely said around 500 girls and 200 community members registered to run in the event.

The group also spent the season learning about empathy and supporting others by working on a Community Impact Project. Dealing said the team decided to collect donations of non-perishable food items, which were given to the United Way of Mid Rural New York to be added to their blue cabinet – a publicly available cabinet of food for individuals in need.

The Place KIDS Program Coordinator Elizabeth Hathaway said their programs are shaping the future by instilling positive values in the youth they work with, while also helping to shape them into well-rounded individuals.

“While working with kids we are able to instill good morals, good values, we can give them coping skills, we can help them just really be productive members of society,” she said. “So that’s an investment in the future right there, because we’re just helping the children to better the world, really.”

Dealing agreed, and said The Place’s Teen Program works to teach local teenagers how to better themselves and break out of cycles of generational trauma.

“[The] afterschool program every week gets social/emotional learning topics. Like [recently] with Martin Luther King Day, we talked about grassroots advocacy, what that means to be able to self advocate, individual advocacy, and assistance advocacy, and the different levels and how they can be a part of that, too. And that’s an ongoing lesson that we continue to talk about very regularly,” said Dealing.

“Our youth are our future, so if they don’t know how to do those things, if they don’t know how to advocate for themselves or their peers or their community, then those cycles are just going to keep happening,” she continued. “So just really giving them the tools and the resources to really know what’s going on, being aware of what’s going on in your community, being aware of what’s going on on a statewide level, and giving them opportunities to be involved in some of those initiatives and some of those campaigns, and things like that.”

The Place’s Teen Program includes several programs each month that range from fun activities to educational opportunities. Programs in 2023 included movie nights, a teen photography program, classes on financial literacy, a holiday cookie exchange, Friendsgiving, cooking classes, mental health awareness, and many more.

In the past year, Dealing also recognized a gap in programming for local youth who aged out of the KIDS Program, but weren’t ready for the Teen Program. To make the transition from kid to teen easier, she created the Big Kids Program and the Teen Life After School Program.

The Big Kids Program began last summer, and transitioned into the Teen Life After School Program for the school year, as a way to bridge the gap between programming for kids and teens at The Place. Hathaway said it was largely due to one KIDS Program attendee who was aging out and didn’t want to stop being a part of The Place environment.

“She didn’t want to not be a part of the environment we’ve created here at The Place. She loves it, she just wanted to continue being involved,” said Hathaway.

“She’s a big part of why I did the Big Kids Program over the summer to help bridge that, because we knew that she was going to be aging out and that she was having a lot of anxiety about that and she didn’t want to, so we were like well alright, how can we help her?” Dealing added. “So she’s a big part of why Big Kids Program over the summer happened, and why the after school program is happening now.”

Dealing said youth in this program learn about topics like self management, self awareness, and social awareness, and have also helped to create a proposal to go on a field trip, and are exploring ways to fundraise and get other local youth involved in the program.

She also hopes to get more kids into her programs who may have traditionally adult responsibilities, such as working to help their parents pay the bills.

“We’ve already mentioned the generational trauma that our county experiences, so that goes along with the generational poverty and substance use, and these kids having adult responsibilities that they have to take care of. And that makes it really hard for them to come to programming when they have to go to work because they have to help their parents pay the bills,” she said. “That is a major challenge, at least for my program, because the transitional age, trying to get kids here when they are in survival mode, is really difficult. So that’s something we’re going to be looking for too: how do we get them out of that?”

Local teens are also given opportunities to get involved in their community through The Place’s Youth Philanthropy Council and Youth Advisory Council.

Getting youth involved in the community

The Youth Philanthropy Council focuses on local nonprofits and philanthropic work. Students from Chenango County school districts who participate in the council each year must complete volunteer hours, sit in on a nonprofit board meeting, interview nonprofits, and give a presentation to the rest of the council on a nonprofit of their choice.

Students also get a taste of fundraising in Youth Philanthropy Council. Vesely applies for a grant through the Community Foundation, which serves as a base amount in their “funding pot.” Then, the councils from each participating school district come up with plans for fundraising, and all money raised is added into the pot.

They then meet together to create a Request for Proposals (RFP), which local nonprofits can apply to for grant funding. Students review the proposals, and around the end of the school year they host a ceremony to award the grants.

“They can decide, when they go to do their RFP, if they want to concentrate on one specific need that’s in the community or if they want it to be a general RFP and any nonprofit can apply, no matter what needs they’re serving or what population they’re serving,” said The Place Youth Services Coordinator Breanne Heath. “They really go through the whole process from start to finish about giving up their time, and then obviously they’re not giving up their money, but they are fundraising and then going through that whole process.”

The Youth Advisory Council was first implemented in 2023. Vesely said the program was made possible through funding provided by the Louise Burchard Pierce Memorial Fund (American Baptist Home Mission Society), the RC Smith Foundation, and through a contract with the Chenango County Department of Social Services.

Chenango County students aged 12 to 17 can join the council, which focuses on needs in the area and what resources can be promoted, supported, or implemented to help fill those needs.

Dealing said the Youth Advisory Council also gives local youth a voice and the chance to play an active role in their community.

“A youth advisory council is a council made up of youth and young adults so that way they can have a relationship with the adults within the system. In this case, this is a county-wide advisory council to help support the youth-serving programs within the county,” Dealing explained. “I worked for an organization in the past where we had a youth advisory council, and basically their job was to make sure that me and my coworkers were working toward the goals that youth today thought were important.”

She said participating students are currently working on creating resources for the community to raise awareness on teen substance use and healthy relationships for teens.

“They recognize generational trauma is a big factor in our community. So they are working really hard right now to create some of those resources to give to their friends and their peers at school, and then hopefully some of that information will trickle to their family members and community members and then it’s hopefully just common knowledge,” said Dealing.

“There’s a lot of anxiety that goes into asking for help, especially in a small community,” she continued. “So their goal is to have brochures and stuff so everything can just be right there, you don’t necessarily have to start a conversation until you feel more comfortable knowing, ‘alright, this is the person I need to talk to,’ or ‘this isn’t normal, I know now this really isn’t how it should be, so now I feel more confident in saying, okay, I do need help.’”

A future goal for the Youth Advisory Council is to reach more schools within the county. Dealing said ideally they would have students from every town or village. As their numbers increase, she also hopes to start hosting the meetings in a different town each month. Students who can’t attend in person are given the option to attend the meetings virtually.

“The goal is when we have more members for the council in neighboring towns that we’ll actually rotate where we’re meeting,” she explained. “So it won’t always be here in our conference room, it’ll be like this month we’re going to meet in Sherburne, next month we’re going to meet in Afton, and really make sure that our members have the opportunity to meet in person as often as possible.”

This is also a goal for the Teen Program, as transportation can often be a barrier preventing youth outside of Norwich to attend programming.

“Transportation is a huge factor, not only for adults, but for youth as well. Getting into Norwich for a babysitter class, or getting into Norwich for a Teen Program event. So it’s important not just for us, but to our youth and community too to reach out and know that they’re not forgotten about,” said Vesely.

The Place staff is also working to get students involved in the community through their Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), which creates a partnership between The Place and local businesses and nonprofits to give Chenango County students the opportunity to gain work experience.

In the past, students have gotten summer jobs with The Place, the Chenango SPCA, the Chenango Greenway Conservancy, the City of Norwich Youth Bureau, the Cottage Bakery, Friends of Rogers, the Town of Bainbridge, the Town of New Berlin, Lamb’s Quarters, United Way, Camp Fiver, the Chenango County Historical Society, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Chase Nursing Home, the Oxford Veteran’s Home, and more.

SYEP is a state-funded program, and requires The Place to include an educational component. Vesely said participating students meet at The Place one day a week for educational days, where they cover topics such as financial literacy, sexual harassment, resume and cover letter writing, mock interviews, and substance use awareness programs through LEAF.

While it’s not a state requirement, Vesely said all participating students also receive CPR and first aid training and certification.

Community support

The Place continues to grow and improve so they can keep offering support and opportunities to the youth of Chenango County, and that task is made easier by the overwhelming support of the local community.

In 2023, the organization completed building renovations that were funded by an anonymous donor. Vesely said the donation was provided before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and has allowed them to remodel their kitchen, replace carpeting and windows, install LED lighting throughout the building, and repaint all interior walls, which wrapped up in 2023.

Community partnerships will continue to be a focus for The Place this year. In 2023, the organization partnered with 69 other organizations, and Vesely said those numbers increase every year. These partnerships help The Place with programming, referrals for resources, summer youth employment opportunities, financial support, and more.

Vesely said United Way of Mid Rural New York has been a big supporter of The Place, as have local churches. Local businesses and organizations also support The Place through volunteering, such as GE/Unison, Alvogen, GHS, and Improve Norwich Now.

“When you live here and you grow up here, you pretty much know everybody and everybody knows you,” said Dealing. “In most cases it’s really good, because obviously it takes a village, and we’re fortunate enough to have one with all the organizations and community members we’re able to partner with.”

The Place was also recently awarded a micro-grant through the Community Foundation for South Central New York to create a Storybook Path, which will need community partnerships to implement.

“It’s taking a children’s storybook, blowing up the pages so they’re larger, laminating them or just making them weatherproof in some way, and then posting them either on like a trail or a path, but outside in the community so children and their significant adult are outside reading, maybe doing some activities related to the book, getting some fresh air and exercise,” Vesely explained.

She said their plan is to collaborate with the City of Norwich Youth Bureau to set up the paths, and her hope is to focus on a different book every six weeks. She also hopes to expand the program to other areas in the county, such as the Rogers Center in Sherburne.

The Place is also working on developing a childcare center for infants and toddlers under the age of three at the new Achieve facility located at 96-100 East Main Street in Norwich. The center would be able to care for 56 children and employ 10 to 17 staff members.

Vesely said The Place will spend 2024 securing funding to make the project happen, and hopes to get the project started by 2025.

“New York State just put out a capital project grant funding opportunity for childcare, so we are working with Commerce Chenango to submit an application for that. And we have some other things that we’re working on to help that as well, the funding aspect. So that will be the big focus this year,” she said.

In addition to outside organizations supporting The Place, The Place aims to continue to serve organizations and families in Chenango County.

To support other nonprofits, The Place held their second annual Nonprofit Showcase event at the SUNY Morrisville Norwich Campus on February 7. The event gave local nonprofits the opportunity to set up a table and educate community members and Youth Philanthropy Council members on the work they do.

Events like these help spread the word about resources that are available in the county. Vesely said The Place also hopes to keep up with the needs of the area so they can provide additional supports and services.

“We try really hard as a team to just constantly be in tune with what the needs of the youth and families that we serve are. And that’s changing, that’s always changing. So we just try to keep on top of what’s going on and if there’s a need, you know, to come up with something,” said Vesely. “Then it’s my job to go out and make sure we have the funds to fill that need, and do our best to help the youth and families of our community.”

Part of that is ensuring their existing programs can reach youth and families across the county. Dealing said she’s planning to collaborate with other municipalities in Chenango County to be able to offer Teen Program services outside of their Norwich location.

Hathaway will be working to expand The Place’s babysitter course outside of Norwich as well.

“We take teens 11 to 16 and I teach them how to properly watch children, how to do first aid and CPR. So one thing that we’re planning this year is to not just do it in house, we’re going to push out into the county more,” she said. “I have one scheduled for Sherburne coming up, and then I’ve been reaching out to other places to see if we can schedule them there.”

“We can’t really think that the community, the county as a whole, is going to keep sustaining our youth if there’s not a reason for them to be here,” said Vesely. “We really need to reach out. So we’re taking most of our shows on the road.”

The Place is located at 22 East Main Street in Norwich, and is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. To learn more about The Place, visit ThePlaceNorwich.com or The Place Facebook page.