Long-standing youth center gets new name and launches campaign, hoping to get ‘out of the basement’
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AMERICAN FALLS – A decades-old youth center has a new name and has reopened under a familiar roof.
Last week, the Power County Youth Center held an open house to show the public that it’s reopened at a temporary location: the United Methodist Church in American Falls at 710 Fort Hall Avenue. The center’s leadership held the event to officially unveil not just its new name to the public but also to announce the start of its latest annual fundraiser, which they hope will eventually allow it to secure a permanent location.
Visitors to the open house were able to visit the space where the youth center has been operating since October. The center offers children and teenagers from third to 12th grade a place to go once the school day ends, between 3:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday.
“We provide a safe, inclusive place for the youth of our community to come after school. We have supervisors that are paid to help with homework, they lead arts and crafts and provide snacks,” said Debra Wynn, treasurer of the youth center. She explained that for some of the students, “The snacks that they get with us is what sustains them until mom and dad come home.”
The United Methodist Church was actually where the youth center started when it opened under a different name. In 1979, it started in the church’s basement as the American Falls Youth Ministries. The youth center quickly grew out of this space, moving into the basement of the American Falls Senior Center in April of that year.
It operated in that building for 24 years before the youth center again grew out of the available space, reopening in 2003 in the basement of the Power County Historical Museum. In 2010, it was renamed the Gerald Fehringer Youth Center to honor Fehringer for the work he did to benefit the youth of the community during his lifetime.
This space served the center well, until the building was flooded in August 2023, eventually exposing everything in the basement to black mold.
“We had to start completely over, and the community donated pretty much everything you see down there,” Wynn said.
The youth center had to close for six months as they worked to acquire new items, and to find a new location. Thankfully, the United Methodist Church offered to let them return to their basement.
“So we’ve actually come full circle,” Wynn said.
With the blessing of the Fehringer family, leadership renamed the center again to the Power County Youth Center, to reflect the broader community it serves.
But the amount of kids using the program has grown in the last four decades since it was first opened in that basement. The youth center now sees an average of 15 students per day, with around 7 being the lowest and 25 the highest amount they see in a day. November was the center’s highest attendance month, and they saw 168 students attend in total.
The need for more space to accommodate the growing number of kids going to the youth center prompted the organizers to launch a new annual fundraiser, called Friends of the Youth Center, which will run all year. People can donate however much they want or as little as one dollar, but for a donation of at least $100 they receive a shirt that says “Friends of the Youth Center.”
People who would like to donate can go to either email powercountyyouthcenter@gmail.com, or they can call or text (208) 406-1461. The youth center accepts payments in cash, check or Venmo transactions.
Wynn and the rest of the leadership of the youth center hope that donations will someday allow them to move into a new building of their own.
“Not that the basements are bad. We’re so grateful, but I want us to come out of the basement. I want us to have a place of our own,” Wynn said.
While there are already renderings of what their building could look like, Wynn said that it could take some time for the center to get there.
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Wynn said.
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