On Dec. 13, a group of teens gathered at Carmen Tilelli Community Center for cupcake decorating and a dance party. It was a fun night for all, with the teens laughing, playing games and enjoying each other’s company.
If one were to take a quick glance, they would have never guessed that the teenagers were a mix of community service students and teens with special needs.
Teen Scene is a program designed to have teenagers with special needs interact with other teens from the community.
Five years ago, Ted Kail started the program while he was at Cherry Hill High School West as a community service project. The idea was for him and other community service volunteers from the school to get together with kids with special needs and just interact with them.
“At first, it started simply as a community service program, because I was a junior in high school,” he said. “Another individual, she helped me out. And then it just grew and it got bigger and bigger and bigger.
“All of a sudden, we were sitting in a room with 50 to 60 people. And the coolest part is that you can’t even tell who is community service and who is an attendee.”
According to Kail’s mom, Jill Greenberg Kail, the mixture of the teens is incredibly seamless. There are no cliques present at the program. No one is found standing on the sideline. Everyone gets along, a feat that is remarkable for a group of teenagers, Greenberg Kail said.
“It creates long-lasting relationships,” Kail said. “We have kids coming back from college just to come to these events, because they truly became friends with everyone. And that’s what it’s all about.”
One of the community service volunteers, Rebecca Horner, said the program has changed her life since she joined it last year.
“I was really quiet when I came,” she said. “But as the kids got friendly, we got friendly with each other. It has made me such a better person. I’m more outgoing because of it. I make more friends because of it. These people here, these are my good friends.”
Horner’s testaments are not just ones shared by the volunteers. Brothers Sean and Leo Curran are teens with special needs who have become regular attendees at Teen Scene. The pair has been able to associate with kids they otherwise wouldn’t talk to and partake in activities that they don’t get to experience outside the program.
“I like to dance,” Sean said about the program’s activities. “I like to dance and eat.”
The program started with very little notoriety or sources of funding. Now, with the cooperation of Cherry Hill Township, Cherry Hill West, the recreation department and the township’s Alliance on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, the program has received the help it needs to be successful. For example, Greenberg Kail said the Alliance on Alcohol and Drug Abuse paid for the pizza at the Dec. 12 meeting.
The success of the program was recently recognized on a national level. Teen Scene received a “Promising Practices” award from the Character Education Partnership. The award simply serves as proof that, regardless if they’re in community service or special needs classes, nothing can hold these teens back from just being teens.
