The Center - Activities

At The Center, every activity is designed with one goal in mind: giving young people from Chicago's Far South Side the space, support, and experiences they need to grow into who they're meant to be. This page is your full guide to everything we offer — from weekly creative writing sessions to summer-long career labs, monthly hangouts to quarterly open mic nights. Whether your student is an artist, a future entrepreneur, a natural leader, or still figuring it out, there's something here for them. Browse the activities below, find what fits, and come be part of what we're building together.

Wellness and Life Skills

Activities focused on mental health, personal development, healthy habits, and the life skills young people need to thrive.

Mentoring
Our mentoring program pairs young people with caring, consistent adults who show up — not just for a session, but for the long haul. Through one-on-one and group mentoring, students build trust, gain perspective, and develop the confidence to navigate school, community, and life. This is a year-round commitment to real relationships, because we know that who's in your corner matters just as much as what's in the classroom.

Self Care Kickback
Self Care Kickback is a monthly reset built around mental health, personal development, and real talk. In a world that constantly demands more from young people, this is the space where they get to slow down, check in with themselves, and just breathe. No pressure, no performance — just an honest environment where wellness is treated as the priority it deserves to be.

Free Room
Free Room is exactly what it sounds like — unstructured time in a structured, safe environment. Students choose how they spend it: games, conversation, rest, creative exploration, or just being still. In a schedule packed with programming and a school day packed with demands, Free Room gives students something rare and necessary: time that truly belongs to them.

So You Want to Be Grown
So You Want to Be Grown is a monthly workshop series that prepares students for real adult life — the stuff no one teaches in school. Money management, building credit, setting career goals, navigating systems, and owning your time. Practical, honest, and direct, this activity meets students where they are and gives them the tools they need to move through the world with confidence.

Off The Clock
Off The Clock is our summer teen hangout series — laid-back, student-driven, and built around one thing: fun. Music, games, food, and good energy with no agenda except showing up and enjoying it. After a school year of programming, goals, and growth, Off The Clock gives students permission to just be young. It runs monthly through the summer and is always one of the most anticipated events of the season.

Civic Engagement

Activities focused on community connection, service, advocacy, and developing young leaders who invest in the world around them.

Give Back Fridays
Give Back Fridays is our monthly community service and civic engagement activity. Students step outside The Center and invest their time and energy into the neighborhoods that raised them — through service projects, community partnerships, and hands-on contributions to the Far South Side. It's how we make sure young people don't just benefit from their community, but actively help build it.

CREATE Ambassadors
CREATE Ambassadors is our emerging peer leadership and civic engagement cohort — a group of students who represent The Center in the community, lead initiatives, and develop as youth advocates and organizers. This program is currently in development, with more details and a launch date coming soon. If your student is a natural leader who wants to make a real impact, this one is for them.

Choose Your Own Friday
Choose Your Own Friday puts the decision-making in the hands of the students — every month, they vote and decide what the Friday looks like. A field trip, a game tournament, a movie, a workshop, a guest speaker, a community event. Whatever they choose, it's theirs. Student agency isn't just a value we talk about at The Center — it's built directly into the schedule.

Creative Arts

Activities focused on artistic identity, literary development, performance, and creative confidence.

CREATE Words
CREATE Words is the weekly writing practice at the heart of everything we do. Through journaling, poetry, storytelling, and structured prompts, students develop their voice on the page and in the world. It's more than a literacy activity — it's a consistent creative practice that builds confidence, self-awareness, and communication skills week after week throughout the year.

Young Black & Lit
Young Black & Lit is a teen and young adult book club where culture, stories, and real life come together. Students read and discuss works by authors who look like them and write worlds they recognize — sparking conversations about identity, history, justice, and imagination. Equal parts literary and communal, this monthly gathering is where reading becomes something students actually look forward to.

Canvas & Cool-Aid
Canvas & Cool-Aid is a monthly, low-pressure art session built around creative freedom. Students pick up a brush, grab a canvas, and make something — no rules, no critique, no wrong answers. Just colors, music, snacks, and good energy. It's one of the most popular activities we offer because it gives students exactly what they rarely get enough of: time to create for the pure joy of it.

The Cypha Open Mic
The Cypha is our quarterly open mic event — a stage for poetry, spoken word, rap, music, and storytelling. Students perform, witness, and celebrate each other's voices in a space that honors artistic expression as a form of power. Whether someone steps to the mic or sits in the audience, The Cypha reminds every young person in the room that their story is worth telling and their voice is worth hearing.

Future Readiness

Activities focused on career development, entrepreneurship, digital skills, and preparing students for life beyond The Center.

The Idea Factory
The Idea Factory is our monthly entrepreneurship and innovation workshop where students learn to think like founders. They pitch ideas, solve real problems, collaborate with peers, and build the creative confidence to see challenges as opportunities. Messy, generative, and student-led — this is where big thinking gets room to breathe and young entrepreneurs start to find their footing.

CREATE Careers
CREATE Careers is our school-year career and digital skills training program, running October through May. Students gain real-world experience in online marketing, social media strategy, e-commerce, and business fundamentals — working toward launching their own ventures and earning a Google Career Certificate along the way. This is workforce development that actually meets young people where they are and prepares them for where they're going.

CREATE Summer Lab
CREATE Summer Lab is the full summer experience — an intensive, multi-week program running June through August that brings together literacy, wellness, entrepreneurship, arts, and enrichment under one roof. Students write, create, build businesses, go on weekly trips, and spend the summer in community with peers who are doing the work alongside them. It's the most comprehensive thing we offer, and for many students, it's the highlight of their year.

Trips
Our field trip program gets students out of the building and into the broader world — museums, colleges, cultural institutions, businesses, and community landmarks across Chicago and beyond. During the school year trips run bi-monthly, and in the summer they happen weekly as part of CREATE Summer Lab. Field trips are the one activity with a cost to families, and we work to make them as accessible as possible.

Parent/Family Programs

Food Pantry

Grow with Google Career Certification Scholarships

Parent Mentor Program

White Sox Family Nite

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