Resource center helps youth in need

By Rachel Kuhr

Special to the Intermountain Catholic

SALT LAKE CITY — The Homeless Youth Resource Center in downtown Salt Lake City is a small building crowded with people of all ages and backgrounds. Smiling employees and volunteers stand behind the front desk, fully prepared to make each person who walks through the door feel welcome.

The name of this center is somewhat of a misnomer because not all of the clients are homeless.

Some couch surf – staying with different family members and friends night after night. Many of the youth simply need some assistance when it comes to basic necessities or finding housing, schooling and employment.

Charlie Knutch has been an employee at the resource center for about five months. "I volunteered [at the center] in high school when I went to Judge [Memorial Catholic High School] and had to do all those mandatory service hours," Knutch said. "It was really a profound experience to sit at a table with people [who] were my exact same age with completely opposite circumstances."

One of the center’s clients, Matthew Campbell, was able to truly benefit from the resource center. Staffers helped him get his own apartment and taught him how to get and hold a job.

Campbell has couch surfed and lived on the street before, and he appreciates having somewhere to get food, clothing, and support, as well as meet people who do not judge him for his circumstances, he said.

"It’s not easy; it’s not always a choice to be on the streets. Sometimes there are things that happen, and we’re not all bad people," Campbell said. "Some of us are the greatest people you’ll ever meet [who] are just having a bad situation happen."

The program manager, Chris Pankratz, believes in empowering youth to make positive choices and providing them with basic needs. She says there are many homeless young people who still need help in the Salt Lake community, but the resource center is not big enough to provide all of these things for every young adult who needs them.

The money from the Juan Diego Catholic High School Distance for Destiny run (see story, left) will benefit those who need it the most.

"I feel like I’m always a better person when I leave here at the end of the day," Pankratz said. "It challenges me. It challenges my world view. It challenges my belief system. It makes me really think about who I am and what I’m doing."