DAWN WOLFSON: Sowing Seeds and Providing Safe Spaces
BY JASMINE FERREL
SPRING 2022
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eadership, mentorship, financial independence, community service and individuality. These five values are at the core of Renaissance Village Youth Center. The youth-based community center strives to prepare the youth to be socially and emotionally evolved to be solid leaders in their community. Originally, based in Camden, NJ in 2017, the founder and director Dawn Wolfson was searching for a place to hold a full center. Although she couldn’t open up a full youth center in Camden, she was able to plant seeds of leadership within the youth of Camden by hosting and curating youth leadership seminars. When discussing Wolfson’s journey on the phone, she explains how she arrived at Pitman with the help of Pastor Randy Van Osten, Pastor of First Baptist Church of Pitman and Director of The Lighthouse Community Center. “When I moved to Pitman, I met a Pastor of a church that wanted to rebrand itself as a community center and asked me to run the youth center portion of it and that’s how we found our home. I’m very thankful for Pastor Randy and the Lighthouse.” When asked her what inspired her to start a youth center, I’m pretty confident she smiled through the phone as she replied 8
with fervor; “Well, I’m a middle school teacher, exclusively 8th grade, like that’s my jam right there and I exclusively teach black and brown babies which are different from what we have in Pitman. But after the election in 2016, it just felt like it was now or never to do what I could to help kids outside of the classroom. I wanted to take the classroom setting and make it more fun, still educational and make it a safe place to be.” There are two levels of Dungeons and Dragons nights led by community members (that have been cleared via background checks). There is also a Lego masters club that follows similar rules to the television show, where the kids are timed to complete/build an allotted Lego challenge. The Renaissance Village Youth Center is also doing its own Lego League. “We’re doing youth engineering and coding for Lego robots and we get to compete for that,” Wolfson mentions. Wolfson’s mission to bring the youth of Pitman together while educating them does come at a cost. Just one season of Lego League costs thousands of dollars to run. With fundraising, grants and donations from the parents, Renaissance Village please see WOLFSON, page 9 08071
