On a given weekday evening, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Dorchester’s Colonel Daniel Marr facility on Deer Street teems with activity: basketballs ricochet off the floorboards of the gymnasium, squeals of laughter echo through the pool, while teens work busily on art projects and others studiously prep for future careers or listen to club alumni about their college experiences.

Located in a large grey building off of Dorchester Avenue in Savin Hill, the teen center is just one of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Dorchester’s three clubhouses, all of which offer a rich variety of programming and services for Dorchester’s younger residents throughout the summer.  

For Mike Joyce, Vice President of Programming at the club, the club’s summer offerings provide Dorchester’s teens with a crucial safe haven from the streets during the city’s peak months for crime.

“They’re counting on this, and we like to think we’re doing our part to help teens who want to stay engaged in the summer,” Joyce said.
Up to 150 teens take part in the Safe Summer Streets Program, an initiative that keeps the club open until 11 p.m. every weeknight in the summer, according to Joyce. For an annual fee of just $5, teens can join the club and have access to recreational, creative and educational services from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Since its launch in 1990, the summer teen program has provided a mix of programming, including a 14-team basketball league, a volleyball league and a swim team. More recently, the club has evolved to add services like free meals and rides home, and what Joyce calls “social recreation,” which includes programming aimed at the creative arts and educational enrichment, a weekly etiquette lesson, dance classes, and career and college prep workshops.

“The club has tried to be good about adapting to what the community needs. We’re just trying to evolve with time,” Joyce said.

Part of that evolution has included the club’s increased focus on helping its teen members find summer employment. Joyce said the club makes a dedicated effort to help teens find jobs and internships by working with partners throughout the city like the Department of Youth Engagement and Employment, the Boston Private Industry Council and the MLK Summer Scholars Program.

The club also organizes a number of special events for teen members, including an annual dinner “college cruise” around the Boston Harbor, where teens can hear from past members about their college experiences, a career fair with 25 professionals and a semi-formal dance. And this year, club members had the chance to participate in a popular new program called BizAcademy. The program was offered in partnership with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), and allowed members to spend two weeks learning about business and drafting and presenting their own business plans.

The club has come far from its first summer, according to Joyce. When it launched in 1990, it had been a record year for violence across the city with 152 murders, many of them teenagers. Joyce and his colleaguess were running the club on a standard 9 to 5 schedule, but began noticing groups of teenagers hanging around the building after closing time. They were looking for something to do and a place to get off the streets, he said, and the club decided to give it to them.

Joyce and his coworkers began taking turns volunteering to stay late each night, sometimes working 17-hour days, to keep the club open for any teens who needed somewhere to go. The Safe Summer Streets program was born, and over two and half decades later, it’s now flourishing.
For Joyce, who has been with the club for over three decades, it’s been rewarding to watch the club grow over the years from a single building with a handful of staff and a small budget, to a three building organization with a $4.5 million budget, a huge boost in programming efforts, and notably, the summer teen program.

“The beauty of it is, teens don’t really have to be here. Parents aren’t making them come,” Joyce said. “It’s rewarding to see that they want to be here, they don’t want to be out on the streets.”

“I think the Safe Summer Streets program is one of the best decisions we ever made,” said Joyce.