Community Youth Center goers spent the last two months building a Youth Center clubhouse from the ground up. The project was made possible by a White Salmon-Bingen Rotary Club donation to Gorge Makerspace, which facilitated the project. (Submitted photo)
Community Youth Center goers spent the last two months building a Youth Center clubhouse from the ground up. The project was made possible by a White Salmon-Bingen Rotary Club donation to Gorge Makerspace, which facilitated the project. (Submitted photo)
After two months of swinging hammers, and safely wielding power tools, a new structure stands plumb and proud in the backyard of the Community Youth Center.
The new clubhouse was made possible by an unsolicited donation from the White Salmon-Bingen Rotary Club, and the efforts of Youth Center goers between the ages of seven and 12. The non-profit program operates under a fiscal sponsorship with Washington Gorge Action Programs and offers coaching, tools and space for people who like to design, invent, create and build.
Rotary Club’s donation provided funds for materials and a few power tools for the Youth Center project.
Before building the clubhouse, Gorge Makerspace director Jack Perrin had participants discuss project options before committing to a final choice. “I had them do a little design activity where I first asked them to brainstorm what they wanted to build,” Perrin said. “I got everything from tree houses to forts and then had them vote on the best idea.”
The clubhouse was voted best. Perrin then arranged participants in teams to make cardboard models displaying their ideas for the clubhouse, “Then they voted on the model they liked the best.” The next step was constructing the real thing.
“The kids did most of it,” Perrin admitted, “I was with them when they were using power tools to make sure they were being safe, but they did pretty much all the sawing and drilling.” The kids put up the clubhouse’s four walls, then connected them, and put a secondary floor on. “I helped a little bit with the rafters, but otherwise they did all the other work.”
A revolving group of Youth Center kids pitched in every week, bringing the once cardboard model to life. “It rotated, whoever happened to drop in that day would work on it,” Perrin explained. “The spirit of it is kids handling tools. [They] can build things just fine if you give them the chance to do it.”
A few Columbia High School students helped on occasion, offering their Woodshop skills when needed. “It was definitely nice to have some skilled teachers helping me out,” noted Perrin.
Perrin explained that the project was pulled from the idea of seeing the kids build without prompt. “If I leave lumber out, which I often do, I’ll come back the next week and it’s all been reconfigured into some fort or something,” he said. “My motivation was to legitimize them building a fort.”
Now that the clubhouse is finished Perrin is playing it by ear for the next project. “I think it would be fun for the kids to figure out how to make it theirs — it definitely is theirs — but make it homey and decide if they want to add lights to it, or make some furniture for it, or put a hammock in it,” said Perrin.
“Who knows what they’ll do,” Perrin added, “I hope they’ll just continue to feel like it’s completely theirs, because they built it, they constructed it and it’s like owning your own house, you’re going to have to worry about whether or not you can put a nail in the wall and hang a painting. They can do whatever they want to it.”
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