The CITY Teen Leaders from the Community Improvement Through Youth Project in Broome County recently kicked off the start of an exciting new project and collaboration with Binghamton University (BU) called the Binghamton Story Project. The CITY teens will begin working with BU graduate students to create and publish an archive of stories about life in Binghamton and the surrounding area. The stories will become part of a permanent collection that will be used for scholarly and historical purposes.
The project kicked off with a Spring Fling at Binghamton Housing Authority’s senior housing facility in downtown Binghamton. The CITY teens planned, catered and carried out an afternoon of events to improve relationships between young people and older adults. The teens sent out invitations to the public housing residents and encouraged them to bring photographs of themselves when they were young. The photos were then used at the Spring Fling to stimulate discussions between the youth and the seniors and kick off the storytelling project.
The Binghamton Story Project is part of BU’s Binghamton Neighborhood Project (BNP), which seeks to understand and improve the quality of life in Broome County through scientific research. The BNP is associated with EvoS, BU’s campus-wide evolutionary studies program, headed by David Sloan Wilson, Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology and Director of EvoS. Other academic units associated with the BNP include BU's GIS (Geographical Information Systems) Center and the Center for Applied Community Research and Development (CACRD).