Third spaces Detroit teens had for themselves, until a teenager on the youth cabinet built one.
Charles O'Neal kept noticing the same gap. Detroit teenagers had home and they had school, but almost nowhere in between, no safe third space to simply be, meet, and figure things out. As a teenager himself, and vice president of Mayor Mary Sheffield's youth cabinet, he decided that was a problem he was actually positioned to solve.
So he built the room. O'Neal created Project Desire, which started as a way to connect young people to mental health resources and grew into something bigger as more teens jumped in. He filled an old library on West McNichols Road with tables of young entrepreneurs and colleges, and let the space fill up with music and art, backed by the Detroit Office of Youth Affairs. The next one is set for October 23.
The point was belonging. Instead of waiting for an adult, a nonprofit, or the city to build a place for teens, a teenager built it for his peers, and made sure it carried resources and opportunity, not just a place to hang out.
"Detroit teens had no third space. So one of them built it himself."
Adults spend years studying the loneliness and lack of safe spaces young people face. O'Neal skipped the study and opened a door, because he is one of the people it affects and did not need permission to start. That is what it looks like when the person closest to the problem is the one who builds.
This is exactly the builder ANF exists to spotlight. When your community is missing something, do not wait for someone older to fix it. Build the room yourself.
The city did not have the space. A teenager made one.
