BIGFORK — High school students in the Flathead have a unique opportunity to enjoy a safe friendly space every day after school.
The Grounded Community Center — which is open to high school students across the Flathead every school day from 3 p.m. until 6 p.m. — offers a safe place to hang out, play games and have snacks.
Students who are home-schooled are also welcome to drop by.
“And our heart is to serve the local teams to provide a place for them to come and hang out and have a safe space and be able to eat snacks after school and, you know, sit on our couches and do nothing or hang out with their friends and play pool play ping pong," said Grounded Community Center owner and operator Marci Truckey. "We have all sorts of events that are just targeted towards teens as well; just to help them have a safe place to go and find fun things to do."
The teen center has been in Bigfork for four years and serves 30 to 40 kids throughout the school year.
“It is very important for teens to have a safe place that they can go and decompress after school because they will find places to go. And they're not always safe. They're not always good," Truckey told MTN. "We really want everybody who walks to the door every single person who walks through the door to feel loved and to know that they're welcome here."
The Grounded Community Center is a non-profit outreach ministry and Truckey wants to ensure high school students have a place to go and an adult to talk to who isn’t a parent or a teacher.
“I can tell you I'm here because I know what I needed when I was a teenager. And I needed adults who could come around and I could vent to and it would be anything, they would encourage me and they love me right where I was at. I needed that as a teenager and I didn't have that. But I see the need for it now and I'm thankful that I get the opportunity to do that for the kids around here,” said Truckey.
The Grounded Community Center is open every school day. but during the summer they scale back to hosting events periodically. You can learn more about the program at https://www.groundedcommunity.com/.
The center is located at 8299 Montana Highway 35 in Bigfork, next to the Stagestop gas station.
