Friday Nights at the Y connect teens

Dane County YMCAs and Madison public safety officials want to get teenagers to the Y on Friday nights as part of a new program called “Friday Nights at the Y.”

Friday Nights at the Y lets teenagers and others attending East Lussier Family YMCA, West Lussier Family YMCA or the Sun Prairie YMCA  participate in sports and other activities with representatives from the Madison police and fire department. Organizers also bring in public officials including business owners and representatives from the army to speak about life skills.

Johnny Winston Jr, the Division Chief of the City of Madison fire department, says the point of the event is to give teenagers and children a safe, controlled space to have fun but “I’d like to think we’re here to be role models fo the teenagers here.”

He adds, “I’d really like to see a kid that came to a program like this become a firefighter because we were engaging with them and they really liked the job and wanted to, you know, become a firefighter one day. Or a police officer.”

The program began last year after the shooting of Tony Robinson as a way to bring healing to the community, according to Paul Vandervelde, the Viceresident of Program Development at the YMCA. Since then the program has served over 300 teenagers and provided 115 free YMCA memberships to teens who are a part of free and reduced lunch programs in their schools, according to Vandervelde. He added that they were hoping to at least match that record this year and that, though Friday Nights at the Y will not be ongoing in the school year, they are looking to expand similar similar programs. These programs include free Summer School for teenagers who have financial difficulties and football programs in poor neighborhoods.

“We’re always looking at how we can potentially do programming of impact in neighborhoods or pockets of neighborhoods in our community where teens or children are challenged with transportation,” Vandervelde said.

Winston said that he sees the event as a valuable community building experience that allows teens to build valuable relationships with public safety officials, saying that in case of an emergency it could be very beneficial for people to have developed strong connections to the Madison fire and police departments.

“We’re here to have a good time and I’m going to say it’s a good time for a good cause,” Winston said.

There are 12 Friday Nights at the Y scheduled for the Summer. They run from 8:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. from through August 19.