Progress 2021: The YAK continues to be a haven for the youth despite COVID-19

As normal life was put on pause and businesses and schools practiced social distancing to adhere mandates and to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, one detriment was that many were driven into social isolation which may cause high rates of depression and anxiety in children and adolescence a study found. As schools closed, most opportunities for students to socialize after school vanished. The YAK Youth Center in Palmer wants to provide a safe and welcoming environment for adolescence after school, but it was forced to shut down back in March and through the summer of last year due to COVID-19. Many students could not interact with their peers and some could not escape the troubles in their lives.

“For a lot of these kids they might have a tough time at home, or they are just going through rough things in life,” the manager of the YAK, Mel Trollman, said. “And they can come here and unload and be themselves or whatever it is that they need.”

The YAK was founded in 2014 by current chairman of the board Andrew Miller. He noticed that children always meandered throughout Palmer, hung out in front of businesses and terrorized the library by standing in front of the entrance, Trollman said. He wanted to start the YAK because many kids did not have a place to hangout other than the skatepark or youth groups ran by churches, Trollman said.

“Everybody that works here is a Christian and loves Jesus and it’s their mission to make these kids just feel like they have someone safe to talk to and somebody in their corner that cares about them and wants to like uplift and support them,” Trollman said.

On a good day, the YAK sees about 15 to 20 kids, Trollman said, but used to see up to 100 kids at the old location. During the pandemic, about two-thirds of the usual number of kids show up, Miller said.

Up until 2019 the YAK operated under the Lazy Mountain Bible Church but are now their own nonprofit organization and rely solely on donations for their revenue, but during the summer last year when they closed their doors and suspended their weekly summer activities called “YAKventures” they could not justify raising money. It was a tough sell to raise money for programs that were not running and while people were strapped for cash, Miller said.

“There was a good chance that we were going to shut down at the end of 2020 and never open up again and so we didn’t want to do a big fundraiser,” Miller said. “What do you do with all of that money if you shut down and never open up again?”

While their doors were shut, they still needed to pay rent and had two options: keep their director Jeff Gail and continue to pay his salary, or since they were shut down, they could use his salary to pay for rent and other expenses. The YAK’s board decided to let Gail go and paid their expenses with his salary.

As last summer came to an end and school started, they had enough money left to open again and operate through Christmas, though that time was nerve racking for the YAK. Another shutdown and they would not have enough money to open back up. They were in a tough position: they needed to stay open to raise money, but if they closed, they had to still pay rent. So, they hired one of their volunteers as a manager to run the YAK at the start of the school year and judged how well the YAK did during the first semester to see if they can stay open past Christmas. With the support of just enough donations from the community to cover their expenses over that first semester, the YAK has as much money today as they did back in August and are now fundraising again. They are calling it “40 for 40” since their goal is to raise $40,000 in 40 days.

To keep their doors open, the YAK needs students to come hangout after school. So, with the tumultuous status of the Valley schools where at a whim they may close for a few days if a student contracts COVID-19, the YAK made the decision to stay open throughout the first semester. A decisive factor to do so was that Kids Kupboard serves meals at the YAK and they wanted to be consistently open, Trollman said.

“We decided to keep our doors open no matter what was happening unless like it’s an extreme blizzard outside,” Trollman said. “There are kids that maybe they’re not going to school for that day but they also might not have lunch at home and so they can come here and get that meal.”

In the long run, the YAK hopes to find or even build a much larger facility. They intended their current location in the same building as Humdingers to only be temporary and in a couple of years they hoped to find a new place. They have been in their current location for a little more than two years now and the pandemic has pushed back their plans for moving, Miller said.

Miller said he wants the YAK to be “some place where kids can go and you can actually burn some energy,” that has a small gym area, computers for students to do their homework and an art and music area.