A cute goat, hot burritos and a karaoke mic aren’t standard skate park gear. On Thursday evening at Philomath City Park, they came with a purpose.
Jackson Street Youth Services brought Skate Park After Dark to town for a two-hour event that included tents with free food, clothing and art activities for youth and young adults — and an appearance by Iris the goat. The organization also brought a message that help doesn’t have to wait until a young person has nowhere to go.
“It’s specifically here to shine a light and stand in solidarity with youth and young adults who might be experiencing a wide variety of different housing instability, or maybe they’re kind of earlier on in that, and we want to get connected and build connections before they’re in those experiences,” said Anna Bontrager, Jackson Street outreach program manager.
The event, open to youth and families ages 10 to 24, offered La Rockita burritos, a mobile clothing closet, art activities and karaoke.
Philomath is the second of six stops in this year’s series. The events are timed to Youth HOPE Month in November. HOPE is an acronym for homelessness, outreach, prevention and education.
Bontrager said the idea is to bring community resources to young people “with little to no barriers.”
“Going into these communities without having to ask them to come to us is the goal,” she said.
Youth homelessness often looks different from what people might picture, Bontrager said. Young people may be doubling up with multiple families in one household, couch surfing, staying in emergency shelters or sleeping in vehicles.
“It might be town hopping, going from community to community, staying with friends,” she said.
She said those forms of housing instability show up in communities throughout Linn and Benton counties.
“We do have youth and young adults that we are connected to in the Philomath community,” she said.
Much of the work is done by Jackson Street’s youth ambassadors, a group of 14- to 20-year-olds, some of whom have connections to the organization’s shelters or drop-in centers. Bontrager said the ambassadors are trained and vetted, and that Jackson Street pays them for their roles at events. The ambassadors run the mobile resource booth and clothing closet, collecting, washing, sizing and storing donated clothes before bringing them out.
A donor built the closet’s mobile shopping racks. Bontrager said the goal was to make it feel like a shopping experience.
“They don’t have to ask for things,” she said. “They can just come in and grab things for themselves.”
Skate Park After Dark has run for six-plus years, adding locations along the way. Bontrager said the team picked skate parks because they are known hot spots where young people hang out. That also takes the team into smaller towns.
“It’s important to bring services to our youth, right? To meet them where they’re at in their community and provide positive, safe outlets for young people,” she said. “And so that’s why we find it important to be in our rural communities.”
The series opened Tuesday in Harrisburg. More than 60 young people came, including youth ambassadors and youth already connected to the program. Ahead of each event, Jackson Street also visits schools with what it calls “pop-up drop-ins” to spread the word about its services.
The program has grown along the way, too. Bontrager said the team had two tents when Skate Park After Dark started. On Thursday, it had seven.
Jackson Street is a nonprofit, and outreach is one part of what Bontrager called its continuum of care. It opened its main drop-in center in Albany about a year ago.
The events are paid for through a mix of state, federal and local grants and community donors. Much of the clothing and other supplies come from in-kind donations.
“It takes a lot of hands to run an event like this, and part of why it’s successful is because our communities care about it and support the efforts,” Bontrager said.
She said the events serve the wider community as well as young people. They are a chance for residents to learn about youth homelessness and to help break down the stigma around it.
“Not only is this an event for youth and young adults, but it’s also meant for our community to get more awareness and information about how they can get involved,” she said. “And one of the best ways is just being out here to stand in solidarity.”
The remaining Skate Park After Dark events are Nov. 3 in Sweet Home, Nov. 5 in Lebanon, Nov. 11 in Albany and Nov. 18 in Corvallis. All run from 5 to 7 p.m.
Jackson Street’s outreach team can be reached by call or text at 541-745-4591. The organization’s 24/7 crisis hotline is 800-901-2904.
