NEWS
Eagle Tribune’s Front-Page Coverage of Boat Launch
08.12.24
Launching the future: YDO boat-building program teaches confidence
LAWRENCE — Ask the creative arts director at the Youth Development Organization what its Makehers program builds and she’ll tell you straightaway.
“Confidence,” Chrystal Pennisi says.
On Tuesday, four middle school girls from Lawrence christened, boarded and rowed the 10-foot Periwinkle Junior skiff they built this year in the Makehers boat building project.
The girls launched their vessel at the Abe Bashara Boathouse, on Eaton Street, home to the Greater Lawrence Community Boating program, and navigated the Merrimack – confidently.
The girls not only built the boat, under Pennisi’s tutelage at YDO’s sixth-floor space in the historic Everett Mills, but chose its colors – pastel pink and green – and a name: Lady Yapsalot.
Communication is a key to learning and growth; and yapping a key to fun and friendship.
Learning, and teaching, are hallmarks of YDO afterschool and summer programs.
Each year, the program serves more than 600 children, teens and young adults from grade 3 to college with an array of challenging and enriching science, technology, engineering, math and art classes.
This enrichment helps in Lawrence, where the public schools were deemed chronically underperforming in November 2011 and, ever since, have remained under the control of an appointed receiver.
Research links STEM education with higher earnings.
The YDO programs encourage tinkering, that most American practice of discovery that goes back to Benjamin Franklin and Nikola Tesla and Beulah Louise Henry and George Washington Carver.
Yapsalot builder Xalix Jaquez, entering grade 9 at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, worked the oars in the new watercraft, navigating a relaxed and exploratory course over the calm dark water on this cloudy day.
Jaquez gained confidence at YDO through a couple avenues. One was working alone, extending a tape measurer and carefully marking a length of wood for cutting, for example.
The other avenue was teamwork: asking each other questions and considering different ways to accomplish the task.
Fellow boat builder Amelia Hiraldo, entering grade 8 at Lawrence Family Development Charter School, sat in the bow facing the stern.
She said project challenges included coordinating tasks, such as when they were fitting and attaching the hull and keel with screws and glue.
On the bench in the stern sat Milan Castillo, who will be entering grade 7 at Gateway Community Day Charter Public School, and Isabell Cancel, going into grade 9 at Notre Dame Cristo Rey.
Milan, who has experience working with tools in her mom and dad’s studio at home, hadn’t previously used boat specific tools such as ship clamps.
At Makehers she learned to bend, shape and laminate wood for the boat.
Milan’s mom, Kapris Santiago, at the ceremony among 25 or so people, said the boat project taught Milan the value of collaboration.
“It taught her teamwork, patience and to be able to listen and ask questions,” Santiago said.
Teamwork and collaboration got the project off the ground.
Bob McCarty, a teacher and administrator in Lawrence at Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School from 2003-09, tacked in a new direction when he became a teacher at Boston Community Boat Builders.
He enjoys seeing students learn to work with their hands and surprise themselves by what they can do while building a boat.
He had long wanted to see the boat building program expand to Lawrence and introduced it to YDO last fall, finding an eager audience in Pennisi.
Growing up she spent time with her grandfather in his woodshop and on the water in his lobster boat as he pulled his traps.
She gained confidence working with tools and on projects. Through YDO Makehers classes, offered throughout the school year, she helps do the same for kids, some of whom are absolute beginners and have never held a hammer.
Mark Kampert, YDO’s director, said McCarty’s teaching approach and YDO’s programs were an ideal match.
“Using his philosophy for engagement, and the empowerment that he puts into the kids who are learning how to do something that people do not expect from children, really aligned with what we are doing,” Kampert said.
Pennisi observed McCarty’s Boston classes over six or so weeks late in 2023, and, with materials and help from him, started a similar program for YDO in January.
Pennisi and the six Lawrence girls built their skiff at YDO from January to May.
They also visited Boston Community Boat Builders where they learned to safely board and row a Periwinkle Junior boat, the model on which they built their craft.
On Tuesday, the girls, clad in life vests, and with a Greater Lawrence boat and captain on the water nearby to help if Yapsalot ran into trouble, took to the river in the boat they built.
Photos: Tim Jean, Eagle Tribune