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In his efforts to shape the program into a high quality, year-round program to enable students to interact with P2K longer, Lapham, who worked with and then succeeded Dennis, added, “I’m a White guy taking over an urban program. I’m not a social worker or a shrink or a psychologist. But I understand the value of what a positive, persistent presence can do for youth. The goal is to have kids spend years, not months, with us.”

He said it is the Rhode Island Foundation and Boys & Girls Clubs of Providence that are helping to make it possible to establish a culture where the participants want to stay.

To also get the buy-in, P2K tailors its various programs, tours, and speakers to tie into issues that may directly affect the participants’ neighborhoods. One of their latest projects, Metal Lab, for example, has the students learning metal fabrication skills (welding, cutting, and grinding) while transforming disabled firearms into sculptures that talk about how students feel about gun violence.

The civil discourse program, which started in 2017, started organically when a teacher came to speak to the boys and young men with her husband, who is a lawyer. The talk morphed into a mock trial, learning the phases of a civil trial and even watching the sentencing of a White man—the opposite, Lapham said, of the stereotype seen on TV—who had been dealing opioids and then talking candidly with the judge afterward.

The first case was about environmental racism based on a real proposed trash transfer station in the Allens Avenue area where high asthma rates have been found. They did a deep dive into asthma and the emissions at the Port of Providence. The second case was about domestic gun violence and the students learned about the legal and emotional aspects of such violence as well as toxic masculinity, consent, and healthy positive masculinity.

For the housing mock trial, P2K students researched the importance of community and the need for more opportunities and resources. They also discovered the high rent averages in Providence, how many hours at a minimum wage job it would take to afford such a place and other realities impacting this nationwide problem.

The participants represented a neighborhood organization or a development corporation. The corporation, who said the project was a benefit to the neighborhood, argued that market rate rent and condo fees were needed, since the building has been underused for so long.

“This project is a win-win for the neighborhood residents and the city as a whole,” the students representing the corporation argued.

However, the students representing the neighborhood organization said while the development could be beneficial to the West End, luxury apartments and condos will increase the rent and housing prices across the neighborhood, creating more stress on already tight budgets.

They proposed at least 40 percent of the housing units be designated below the market prices for rent and condo purchase.

“Creating these opportunities for affordable housing would also increase the likelihood that the new units would be occupied by people who more closely reflect the diversity of the neighborhood,” argued the students representing the organization. “We are simply looking to create balance for the benefit of the people and the culture that has existed in our beloved neighborhood for many decades.”

Whom should the judge rule in favor of?