The newly formed Crookston Youth Foundation has moved into the old This Is Sew Broadway building at 104 North Broadway in downtown Crookston. They recently signed a three-year lease and are working hard at getting the space ready for youth to congregate.
The Crookston Youth Foundation is the brainchild of Tom Amiot who saw the need for a place for youth in the Crookston community to spend time at a safe and productive location. The process of starting the CYF started in March of 2017 and they have a board made up of adults, and a youth board of nine kids (the board is pictured to the right at their meeting on Tuesday evening). “I worked with a group of five very passionate and capable individuals to get it going,” said Amiot. “We have met every two weeks for the past 15 months. It is a very talented group of people.”
Preliminary plans for the space–
The board members are working hard to get the space ready to be open as soon as possible. “It is about 3,500 square feet and have selected the youth board of nine individuals and they are very enthusiastic and by our second formal meeting with them, they have done some research on what they want and the feel they want for the building,” said Amiot. “We will have a casual area, the students wanted a recording room and we have a room that will meet their needs. We are very anxious to put in virtual reality and they have already researched that, they wanted a quiet area with no electronics. They have taken the bull by the horns and have run with it.”
Supervision
The CYF will be selecting adult supervisors that will have to go through a background check before they can volunteer at the center. “We are going to need a number of adults in the community to supervise the youth center,” said Amiot. “My thought is we have teams of individuals from the community and we have four or five teams and assign them a week and their rotation would be every four or five weeks and hopefully have two individuals on each shift and we would do background checks and do the proper vetting.”
Three legs of purpose-
Amiot said the CYF is made up of three legs-
1. Youth Center
2. Seed (Crepe and snack sales)
3. NVision – career prep
“The first leg is the youth center of course. The second leg is what we call the seed which will be a crepe, snack café to help us with financial support in the future,” said Amiot. “The last leg is NVision. It is the main reason for the Crookston Youth Foundation. It is our hope to match up students interests with businesses we have locally and the goal is to retain youth in our community and try to develop the workforce.”
Crepe and Snack Café location and transportation –
The location for the crepe and snack café to
help fund the center is still up in the air. “I think more than once we thought we had a location, but it didn’t work,” said Amiot. “We are still searching for it and the hope is it will be downtown, close to where we are now. We have been approached by Tri-Valley and THE BUS will help with transportation.”
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