Teenage Sanctuary: “Kickback Fridays” Offers a Safe Space for Youth
On a recent Friday evening the warm Oakland weather and booming hip-hop music from a newly renovated building on International near 80th served as a beacon to neighborhood youth: Another “Kickback Friday” was happening.
Tariq Anderson and Malachi Ray, both 18, had stepped into the “Kickback Friday” spot just after they got out of school earlier in the day.
“This is better than just going home and doing who knows what,” Tariq said. “This is where we actually get ahead on our projects.”
Anderson was referring to the multimedia presentation he was working on with Ray. They were participating in a contest for local youth to develop an anti-opioid social media campaign.
The two friends took advantage of the free laptops and speedy WiFi. “We can get a lot more done right here,” Ray said.
“Kickback Fridays” is a free drop-in event for Oakland youth hosted by Roots Community Clinic that aims to give neighborhood teens a safe, supportive space and connect them with any wrap-around services they may need, said Breanna Pierce, a staff facilitator.
“This is a place where we expose them to different activities that they don’t typically do,” Pierce said. “It’s also a space that gives them access to other services if they need it.”
For the weekly events, Roots’ space gets converted into an indoor-outdoor club atmosphere – low-sit couches, thumping music and a half-court basketball court located outside, and video games, large screen TVs, access to laptops and a food-and-drinks spread inside.
One of the planned activities was a multi-week project that required teens to create a multimedia campaign on the consequences of opioid use. For a lot of the kids, using editing software on their smartphones was second nature, but conceiving and delivering an effective public health message for their peers was more challenging.
“We bring people in from the community to work with them on story-telling and mentoring,” Pierce said. “We want them to have access to all of the talent in their own community.
Kickback Friday has become a consistent destination for about 15-20 youth every week. There’s also a health navigator on site to address mental and physical health concerns and resources to help connect youth with internships, jobs, and housing services. The event was modeled after Roots’ “Welcome Wednesdays” that connects adult residents with services, but the “Kickback Fridays” concept aims specifically for youth with a softer touch on outreach, Pierce said.
“We don’t force the kids to engage in activities or push our services onto them,” Price said. “It’s just a safe space where they can just sit on a couch and go through their phone with their friends if they want to, but as we get to know them, some start to ask, ‘Yeah tell me more where we can get hooked up with that job’.”
Ray, who plans on majoring in filmmaking and also records music, uses the tech at Kickback Fridays to refine and edit his beats.
“If I wasn’t here, I’d just be playing around,” Ray said, before he dug into a chicken sandwich. “But here, I get to sharpen skills on Canva and make promos for my album.”
Ray was in the process of writing a song to go along with his anti-opioid campaign and his friend Anderson jumped in with some freestyle lyrics. They jotted down the lines and turned back to their laptops, where they kept editing and working.
