Our Town Needs a Youth Center :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

Our Town Needs a Youth Center Smallville Elementary was built in 1919 in order to enrich the lives of the youth in Smallville. It served as a school until 1977, when it was closed and changed to a community center. The purpose of the building, however, remained the same: to enrich the lives of Smallville' youth (Ellis 67). Many years ago, my grandmother took painting lessons in the old Smallville building while I had daycare. It was a perfect blend of young and old. Recently, however, the building has not been used as it was intended. It is now used strictly as a senior center, leaving no place for the young to gather. Now, as a result of youths'being shut out of the only public recreation building, the city can no longer attract new families and the young are turning to crime as their only pastime. The best solution to remedy these problems is to build a youth center for the children and teens of Smallville. What would this much needed facility provide for Smallville? The Bigtown Recreation Center is a great model for Smallville, housing several basketball courts, tennis courts, a weight room, and a swimming pool. The programs conducted at the center include athletic clinics in the summer, swimming, basketball, and tennis lessons, and even fitness training and aerobics. These are all activities nearly every citizen can enjoy. So, if Smallville had a similar recreation center it would benefit the young and old alike. However, our recreation center should provide programs specifically for children and teenagers. Aside from just providing athletic and sports recreation for the youth, we should also provide them with tutoring services, a game room and a lounge were they can just "hang out." The programs that would be provided by our youth center would improve our town in many ways. Smallville is failing as a city because it cannot attract new residents. The town is dying because most of its citizens are elderly; they will soon pass away. The population is decreasing as older citizens die or are sent to nursing homes and no new residents replace them. According to the 1990 Census, the population of Smallville has decreased by nearly 3,000 people in the last ten years. Of the 11,194 people that are left, nearly forty percent are over the age of fifty-five.