The Everett Haitian Community Center opened a youth center on Saturday morning at 467 Broadway, the building that used to house the Everett Chamber of Commerce. The center calls it the Youth Hub, part of its Emerging Bright Stars Academy, and the opening ran from a 10 a.m. ribbon cutting through a brunch and into a three-hour forum on what federal immigration policy is doing to the mental health of Everett families.
What the Hub is
The center describes the space as an after-school and enrichment site for children and teenagers, with board games, chess, a homework area and a small studio for the young people’s own broadcasts. The temporary site at 467 Broadway is a few doors from the center’s main office at 427 Broadway. Over the summer the center ran free weekly dinners for children and youth from Everett and surrounding communities, and it says it has served more than 6,000 prepared meals in the last three months.
The forum
The second half of Saturday was the center’s second forum on the impact of policies on mental health, this one focused on Temporary Protected Status and the public charge rule. Everett has one of the largest Haitian communities in Massachusetts, and the end of TPS protections for Haitians puts thousands of Everett residents, many of them parents of children in the Everett Public Schools, at risk of losing work authorization and legal status. The center has been running walk-in hours on Wednesdays and Thursdays to help TPS-affected parents register their children for school. “In 2018 our communities faced similar atrocities,” the center wrote in its announcement. “Only this time it’s worse.”
The center’s executive director is the Rev. Dr. Myrlande DesRosiers, an attorney and pastor who has led the organization through its growth from a storefront to one of the larger immigrant service organizations north of Boston. The center was also among the community groups that spent Labor Day weekend on the picket line with striking Encore Boston Harbor workers, and it noted in its own post that it had worked with the state Gaming Commission and the casino’s community advisory committee in the 18 months before Encore opened.
The Youth Hub is open to Everett children and youth. Information is at theehcc.org or [email protected].