Generally, the Bayview Teen Night Program seeks to promote positive teen development through enabling teens to make positive choices by confidently rejecting and withstanding the lure of negative choices in order to become valuable, contributing members of society. More specifically, the program's primary goals include the following: a) provide professional, safe and free supervision for teens from disadvantaged families largely residing on the Triangle; b) use cultural, artistic and educational programming to promote character development and positive values; c) provide teens with a sense of safety and security that extends from within the program to the surrounding neighborhood; and d) offer concerned, dedicated and qualified staff to teens so that they may form a supportive adult relationship with at least two staff or volunteers. Bayview's strategy in accomplishing these goals is to encourage teen's natural curiosity to develop lifelong learning patterns by engaging them in creative, positive experiences.

The Bayview Teen Night Program serves teens ages 13 to 18 from low to middle-income families residing on the Triangle and in neighboring communities. The population is racially diverse, including individuals of Hispanic, Black, Asian, Native American and White backgrounds. The Bayview Townhouses (source of program's principal population) serve 102 families with 87% of the heads of households born outside the United States. The Teen Night Program will be offered within the Bayview International Center for Education and the Arts, as well as on Bayview's grounds and throughout the greater Madison community.

The Bayview Teen Program takes place three nights per week during the critical hours of 5:00 to 9:00 p.m.—a period during which most teens are out on the streets unsupervised. The program will include homework help (offered synchronously with the After School Program), vocational workshops, computer classes, arts and culture programs, dances, recreational programs, service learning, as well as supervised free time. The implementation of the Teen Night Program is crucial to the Triangle, as resident teens have not had a program solely designated to meet their needs and interests; rather, teens have had to participate in Bayview programs with elementary youth. As a result, most teens have avoided taking part in Bayview Center programming choosing, instead, to congregate in the parking lot or the nearby park. By providing teens with time exclusively devoted to meet their unique needs and interests, they will gain a sense of purpose and belonging in the Triangle Neighborhood that they have been lacking by developing positive, non-parental adult relationships with staff and volunteers. When the teens participate in Teen Night, they will spend their time in structured, supervised care, making constructive use of their time. The program is coordinated and developed by Education & Recreation Coordinator Teri LeSage.

We thank the following sponsors for their generosity and ongoing support:

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