NAPERVILLE, IL – Beginning Tuesday, March 15th the Alive Center in Naperville is bringing its free teen drop-in hours for 6th – 12th graders to Hanover Park Illinois at the Greenbrook Tanglewood Homeowners Association, Inc. Located at 1211 Catalina Drive, Hanover Park, Illinois 60133. The free teen drop-in hours will be available every Tuesday and Thursday from 2:30 – 5:30pm. The drop-in hours will include art experiences, games, life skills, movies, other interactive activities and more. This will be Alive’s third location, others including Naperville and Aurora Illinois.
The Greenbrook Tanglewood Community consists of 505 townhomes arranged in 76 separate buildings. Today, Hanover Park boasts the youngest residents of any Chicago northwest suburb, with a median resident age of 29.7. The spirit and energy of youth is visible throughout the community. Hanover Park is a family community with plenty of neighborhood sports teams and activities available for young families. Hanover Park neighborhoods are filled with children.
Both organizations recognize the power teenagers hold to represent and shape their community. Alive’s teen-created mission is to be teen-led, teen-driven centers focused on empowering the youth of today to become the impassioned, resilient leaders of tomorrow. Alive is a Teen-Led Teen-Driven (TLTD) program that was designed to empower the local youth by creating a supportive space for teenagers to innovate, while instilling leadership skills and confidence into younger teens and tweens.
James L. Slater, President, Board of Directors, Greenbrook Tanglewood Homeowners Association, Inc. says, “At the same time that our Association is investing ten million dollars in infrastructure to improve the lives of 505 families who reside in Greenbrook Tanglewood, we continue to be engaged in investing in our youth by partnering with DuPage County Habitat for Humanity and the Alive Center to launch Alive-Hanover Park, an after school Teen Drop-in Program for youth grades 6-12 at our Clubhouse for our community and the community at large. An investment in our youth is one of the best investments any organization can make.”
Michala Stokes, Neighborhood Revitalization Manager, DuPage Habitat for Humanity says, “The most common piece of feedback I hear is a lack of engagement activities for youth. The partnership with Alive could not have come at a more critical time after the pandemic. Having a program to release the imagination and creativity that exists among this neighborhood’s youth will increase the quality of life for the whole community, which is exactly what neighborhood revitalization is all about.”
The Alive Center’s free drop-in hours provide unique programming for local students to come together to learn, create, and socialize in a safe, welcoming, supervised environment. During the critical hours after school and over summer vacation, Alive’s program provides teens with free tutoring, mentoring, classes and workshops on a variety of topics such as leadership, career development, healthy cooking, art and music, drug prevention and awareness, anti-bullying and cyber safety information, community service projects, STEM, media, and more. The majority of these programs are teen-led and teen-driven to make them most relevant for the younger teens while giving the older teens a place to lead and innovate.
Alive Center CEO Kandice Henning says “We are so excited to be bringing a free teen center to the Hanover Park area. The Greenbrook Tanglewood neighborhood, which is under revitalization, is a perfect fit for one of our centers. We are very impressed by the results we have seen to date in Naperville and Aurora and we want to share our centers with other communities.”
The Alive Hanover Park Drop-in program is free of charge and available to all 6th – 12th graders. For more information the community can reach out to Kandice Henning at kandice@alivecenter.org.