Community activist needs help to save her shoestring youth center in Syracuse

Syracuse.com reported that Mary Nelson has pulled off the seemingly impossible before and is trying to do it again, this time to save her new youth center.

In 2002, starting with little more than her own drive, Nelson created an annual youth day barbecue and give-away that now puts backpacks stuffed with school supplies into the hands of thousands of kids, upwards of 9,000 this year alone.

In June, she opened the Mary Nelson Youth/Community Center at 2849 S. Salina St. in a building she rents from Catholic Charities of Onondaga County. Nelson says she serves 120 children a day in her after-school program and offers services to their families and adults. The center, open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays, aims to help children and adults with their education and job skills.
Want to get involved?

You can contact Mary Nelson through her Web site: www.youthdaybarbecue.com or by calling her at 403-0220.

If the need is clear, the center’s future is not. Nelson says she’s behind on rent and out of money. To stay open she needs to come up with $4,000 a month, she said. She also needs another $7,500 to get caught up.

Nelson said she’s tried unsuccessfully to obtain grant money to run the center, and will continue to hunt for grants to stay open in the long run. “If I can get the community to help me until I get grant money coming in, I would have my goal every month, I would have what I need to keep that center up and running,” she said.

Nelson said she’s set up a nonprofit corporation through which she runs the youth barbecue give-away and the youth center.

In 2008, the ABC Television Show “Live with Regis and Kelly,” awarded her a $50,000 gift from Kmart for her work with the barbecue. Nelson said she set up the center with that money.

Nelson works as a billing representative for the radiology department at University Hospital.
No one who works at the youth center, including herself, gets paid, she said. Nelson says her landlord has been supportive as she tries to come up with the rent money.

Toni Maxwell, Catholic Charities director of development, said the center is just the kind of operation Catholic Charities wants to see in the building, but that it has a “business relationship” with Nelson. Maxwell declined to discuss specifics of the relationship. “We are very respectful of her work and we’re going to be very patient with her situation,” Maxwell said.

Nelson is hoping to have center finances in order by November. “I know once people see that I am reaching out, I believe that I’m going to have the support that I need. I believe in my community. I really do,” Nelson said.