The word “change” carries a lot of weight. Sometimes it represents something small, like switching from one brand of coffee to another or taking a different route to work. Sometimes, though, it’s as big as the transformation of one world to another.
That’s the goal of the Change Center of Knoxville: To change lives for the better – and maybe even save a few lives along the way. At first, the idea seems like one of those small ones. The Change Center is a building that includes a skating rink, a rock climbing wall, an amusement center, community center meeting spaces and a program where teenagers can get a foothold on their future careers. The big idea, though, is to help young people avoid a culture of violence.
“It started with voices of young people saying they needed a space like this to come and hang out with friends and be teenagers,” says Change Center director Nicole Chandler while sitting in one of the center’s meeting rooms on a busy Saturday. Chandler and chief financial officer Bruce Charles were hired for the center after initially helping conduct a feasibility study for the project in 2015.
Once a dreary warehouse space in part of the Overcoming Believers Church on Harriet Tubman Street, the Change Center now is filled with light and music. A skating rink, a cafe, state-of-the-art arcade games, spaces for birthday parties and a career center have come to life. Children and parents line up to go inside, and a friendly Knoxville policeman politely asks visitors to empty their pockets and step through a metal detector before going inside.
In a long list of studies, boredom in young people stands surprisingly high as a contributor to inner-city violence. This information was affirmed by a group of young people who were enlisted as part of the City of Knoxville’s Save Our Sons initiative, a program aimed at reducing violence in minority communities. Mayor Madeline Rogero asked the group some questions.
“One of the things they shared is that when they get bored, they do dumb things,” says Chandler. “And that’s true for all of us. As we get older, how we do that changes as our resources and our decision-making changes, but THAT we do dumb things doesn’t change. For some people, it’s shopping or eating or drinking more.”
Teenagers, whose brains are still developing, tend to be more impulsive and easily influenced. Boredom combined with the presence of gangs and the availability of guns can become a toxic mix. The trend for gun violence in inner cities had been trending upwards and younger, both in terms of victims and perpetrators. In 2015, East Knoxville got national attention when 15-year-old Zaevion Dobson was killed while trying to protect two friends during a drive-by shooting. While Dobson was recognized as a hero, it also highlighted the culture of violence among young people within the community.
Overcoming Believers Church pastor Daryl Arnold knows the violence all too well. Since the church was founded in 2003, he has officiated 115 funerals that were due to violence. He was, in fact, walking from his office through the church’s unused space to the sanctuary to officiate yet another young person’s funeral when he realized the unused space might be the right place for the center Mayor Rogero had proposed. He had, he says, made a promise to God that if his church could find a permanent home, he’d dedicate part of the space to the community. The church moved to the Harriet Tubman location in 2013.
“I thought I heard God say, ‘If you give this space on this side (of the door) for the community, you won’t have to bury as many on the other side,’” says Arnold. “It was a no-brainer.”
Arnold has four children, including sons who are 8 and 10 years old.
“I’m perfectly aware that if the violent culture we have doesn’t change, my sons could be shot or become a shooter,” says Arnold. “I wanted to change things.
No 1, I wanted to be faithful to my promise and give back to the community. But No. 2, I didn’t want to be burying more kids.”
The space is donated, or rather leased for $1 a year, from the Overcoming Believers Church to the Change Center. The center opened on Dec. 21, 2018.
Chandler says it was the young people who suggested the idea for a skating rink. She says all of the adults in the room were surprised: “The mayor said, ‘OK. You plan a skate party. The city will pay for it.”
Knoxville Area Transit (KAT) partnered with the city to provide buses for the approximately 200 kids who attended the event.
“The only skating rink in Knoxville at that time was Skatetown USA in Halls,” says Chandler. “They went and had a great time. And when it was over they asked the mayor, ‘When can we do this again?’ So the mayor began to look at, ‘How can we put feet to this? Where is a place that’s more accessible for young people to be able to do this more often?’”
Chandler grew up in East Knoxville and graduated from Austin East High School and now is finishing her doctorate in education from the Grand Canyon University after receiving her masters degree from UT. She was maybe less skeptical of the skating-rink idea than some others: “When I was a teenager, we used to go roller skating at a rink that was off of Chapman Highway that has since closed. But that was a thing we did, too, especially going on Sunday night from 7 to 10, that was the spot to be. And I remember doing what I needed to do with chores and doing what I needed to do with my grades so that I could go skating on Sunday night. So absolutely, I am mindful of how important it is for young people to be with their friends and be loud and have good music and a place to eat. It was important then, and I think it’s still important now.”
Another important aspect, though, is giving young people a place to see their futures by way of the entrepreneurial center.
“We’re helping young people learn earlier financial literacy,” says Chandler. “What money really is and how to use its currency. How to invest and how to save and how to become a business owner, if that’s what you want to do.”
The center has mentoring programs in which business owners and other professionals can help young people understand how to act on their ideas and find out how their natural talents and skills can translate into jobs – sometimes even jobs they didn’t know existed. Arnold agrees.
“Part of what we want to do is find the talents buried inside young people that they might not even know are there,” he says.
Chandler says one of the most important goals is to let people know that the center is open to everyone in the city, not just residents of East Knoxville, and to let families know the center is a safe place.
“I’m a parent, and if I’ve got a question about the safety of where my daughter is going to be, I’m more likely to say, ‘Uh, maybe not,’” says Chandler. “We have an intense security system and a partnership with the City of Knoxville and the KPD that provides a clothed officer here every time the lights are on and we’re open. We also have a metal detector and additional security. KPD has been an incredible partner in patrolling the facility so that we’re able to ward off incidents as much as possible. We believe it is a safe place, and we’ve done our very best to make sure it is.”
Chandler says she loves watching kids’ and families’ reactions when they walk into the Change Center for the first time.
“They’re like, ‘Wow!’ … They could see that this was an effort to give them a really nice space that they could be proud of and want to be in. They know their worth and that they were worthy of having this kind of investment in their community. … That was part of the intention to create this facility in this community because everything we see in the paper or on TV [is] not true. There are great things happening in East Knoxville. There are great kids and families who live in East Knoxville and are from East Knoxville, so I think having this place helps to dispel some of those perceptions of what East Knoxville is and what is in East Knoxville.”
And word has been getting out in the best possible way.
“Kids have been waiting on us,” says Chandler. “They’re coming back and talking about it and telling their friends, and we’re seeing more families. And our staff are representatives of several high schools, and their friends are coming and wanting to apply and [are] asking, ‘Are you still hiring?’ They’re telling our story. The kids are telling our story. They’re our greatest billboard.”
More info can be found at changecenterknoxville.com
