Our proposed youth center will have a dedicated area only for homework and schoolwork use. This area will also have several computers (estimated at 5, but more will be added if needed) for student use. The computers will be running the latest version of Linux, networked in a thin-client/server environment, saving money and making maintenance easier. These computers will be readily equipped with the latest office software (OpenOffice.org) and other freeware programs good for educational use.
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We plan to work in conjunction with high school and college students to offer tutoring and assistance with homework and studying in our youth center. Students in the high school’s silver cord program, for example, would be able to help teach other students at our youth center. We may even offer free student-lead classes on subjects of interest.
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To make for the most comfortable studying and homework environment, a seperate area will be offset from the music and lights of the rest of the center. This will allow students to study in a quiet location, but still be among their friends and in an uplifting atmosphere just for young people.
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Including the homework computers, there will be between 10 and 20 computers available for internet use throughout the facilities. Each will be monitored via remote monitoring (ie, programs that can monitor all activities). Inappropriate use will be immediately corrected and the violating person’s use privileges will be temporarily suspended.
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"Wii would like to play". So would every other young person in Muscatine. The Nintendo Wii will benefit us two-fold. First, it will help accomplish our goal of getting all young people to spend their time at the youth center, keeping them away from negative environments (away from domestic violence, drug use, criminal behavior). Secondly, the Nintendo Wii a fun way to get young people moving, energized, and healthy (compared to sit-down videogames).
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An important goal of our youth center plan is to attract as many young people as possible. The goal is to get at-risk youth away from drugs, violent homes, and other negative situations, and provide them with a constant, stable, positive environment where they can build social relationships. To attract more youth, we will offer online computer games for playing at the youth center.
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In our efforts to attract as many young people, we will broaden our appeal with the use of anime. We plan to play various Japanese Animation videos to appeal to the new and growing audience to this genre. We plan to carefully select our videos to appeal to the audience while providing a positive message.
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We will be playing music throughout most of the youth center, excluding quiet areas for studying. Music will be selected carefully to be appropriate, and explicit lyrics will be avoided.
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Our youth center will have plans for several dances and other social events. There will be celebrations for holidays, sports events, and any other time that a young person might instead go to a more negative, uncontrolled environment and be tempted to drug or alcohol use. Social events help students grow positive relationships and build interaction skills.
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StepMania, an alternative to Dance Dance Revolution, is revolutionary in that it will help us to get young people more active than they normally are. Youth these days tend to spend their time not interacting nor being active, and StepMania is a way to counter both. StepMania involves coordinated dance like steps in rhythm to music, and is nearly addictive to many teenagers and college students.
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Our location is going to be an important part of our project, and this will take the longest to decide upon. We plan to try to make it at a point that will be easily accessible to all young people, while not in any dangerous areas. We may choose to rent space, and we will be very fierce in our rental negotiations, or we may choose to build a new building, depending upon the type and amount of funding we begin with.
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Having quality people running our game center will be important. However, the type of person to run the place also has to be the type of person to love the place. It is very likely that we will need no paid staff, and can rely on responsible volunteers (references, over 18, etc). Ryan will also spend a lot of time at the youth center during its first year of operation - to ensure that we are successfully meeting the needs of all young people.
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Leadership of our youth center is going to be important. To ensure that our youth center successfully caters to the needs of all young people, a board of young people will be chosen to make decisions for the place. While day to day operations will be handled by the Mayor's office, decisions such as which new activities to offer, where to advertise (if any), and when to hold events will be made by this group. Applications would be taken, and membership would be similar to the Burlington Youth Advisory Board.
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Although we don't have set hours absolutely set in stone, we'd like to be open something like:
Monday 1pm-11pm
Tuesday 1pm-11pm
Wednesday 1pm-11pm
Thursday 1pm-11pm
Friday Noon-2am
Saturday 10am-2am
Sunday Noon-Midnight

With this type of scheduling, we can structure times to cater to all ages of young people. For example, on school nights middle school students would be required to go home by 9, high school students by 10, and college students at close. We want to provide as much open-time as possible to ensure we can accomplish our mission whether it's right after school or late at night. Most negative situations happen at night, so we want to be open as late as possible to keep youth away from them.
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