It is never easy being young, but in a small town with nothing to do and an economy that relies heavily on tourism, being young can mean being virtually invisible. The Berkshires are a popular location for second home owners. They enjoy strolling through the center of Great Barrington, shopping and drinking coffee. The kids hanging out on the street are just an annoyance. Shopkeepers shoo them off the sidewalks, they are the only blemish on an otherwise perfect town.
But what are these kids supposed to do with themselves? Where are they supposed to go?
In 1999 a tragic chain of events began to shine an ever increasing spotlight on the truth behind this question. A series of drug and alcohol related deaths spurred community action. It soon became apparent that southern Berkshire County, no matter how flawless it seemed on the outside, had a serious heroin problem.
Fed up with attending friends funerals and tired of feeling helpless, Amanda Root, a 19-year-old high school drop out, began attending meetings of concerned parents and other citizens who called themselves the Heroin Task Force and Prevention Council. The group of parents, police officers, business people and other community leaders met to figure out what to do about the problem that had been lurking in their community for far too long. They came up with a long list of goals to help to curb the problem and prevent it from getting any worse. One of the things to come out of the meetings was the creation of the Railroad Street Youth Project through the production of "Suburbia" a play by Eric Bogosian which tells the tale of a group of young people with nothing better to do than hang out in front of the 7-11, or in the case of Great Barrington, the Cumberland Farms. With the help of the Barrington Stage Company, Amanda co-produced the play. It was the first project of the new youth run group, the Railroad Street Youth Project, named for the street in town where all the kids hang out.
Each night they played to sold out houses and followed the performance with a discussion about the lives of the young people in the play, and the lives of the young people in Great Barrington. The play raised about $7000.00 which was enough to begin working on future projects.
Soon Amanda had secured a small office space on Railroad Street and was working hard to create more projects and performance that involved the community. With the help of others in the community, Amanda has managed to build something out of nothing and create a place where kids can go to just hang out or create something of their own.
The mission of the Railroad Street Youth Project is to empower each other as young people by creating youth generated activities that will build intergenerational communication, responsibility and self-worth. This is comprised of four parts:
If any young person between the ages of 14 and 25 needs sponsorship in anything from going to court to community activism, RSYP provides assistance.
Any young person between the ages of 14 and 25 can fill out a proposal form with any idea that they may have and apply to RSYP for funding and assistance with the project.
RSYP runs several regular programs, including a mentoring program.
RSYP will help young people between the ages of 14 and 25 to take the Berkshire Enterprises Business Entrepreneurial Training Program and assist in developing the business and raising money.
Now RSYP is a fully formed non-profit organization, still working to help young people do the things that they want to do. It is run entirely by young people under the age of 25 with the help of an executive board and a youth operational board. The executive board is a group of adults and young people who were hand selected by Amanda for their honest concern about the youth of their community and their knowledge of how to get things done. The youth operational board has a rotating membership of about a dozen young people who meet on a monthly basis and vote on which projects to move forward with and which still need a bit of work. If you would like to be on one of our boards, please send us an e-mail or give us a call.
70 Railroad Street,
Great Barrington, MA 01230
phone: 413-528-2475
fax: 413-528-3857