The REC Room – a free after school program for teens ages 12 to 18 in the southern Kenai Peninsula – closed last June after flooding issues in the building that housed it. In the year leading up to its closure, the program served more than 100 teens in the area.
The program ran under the Kachemak Bay Family Planning Clinic. Claudia Haines, the clinic’s CEO, said that while the building is being restored, the after school program has closed indefinitely. After fixing it, the space’s future remains unclear.
“It's not gonna reopen as it was, and that's really heartbreaking for all of us, because it was this beautiful, thriving place, very inclusive,” Haines said, “and a lot of teens were welcomed there who didn't find other places they fit.”
Haines said that besides lacking a facility for the program, two other factors led to this closure. First, the clinic lost a four year Positive Youth Development After School Program grant that funded a majority of the REC Room’s operations. Second, insurance rates increased significantly to the point where the clinic could not sustain the program.
However, the clinic is still running REC education programs including working with the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District to provide sexual health education and running peer led education events across the southern Peninsula.
Haines said it’s been a community effort to continue programs for teens in the region.
“We've been able to come together for this common goal of supporting healthy teens, helping them know how to navigate the world and be safe,” she said.
In the meantime, the clinic is still offering full services and has begun a round table program - a teen led initiative to hold discussions around topics young people are interested in, such as a discussion around media literacy that happened earlier this month.
