MY STORY: The Boiler Room: A place to grow, learn

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For my senior project this year, I volunteered at The Boiler Room in Port Townsend. In my time there, I learned that they offer free food, hygiene products, music and most importantly, an accepting community.

In some nonprofits, volunteers commit themselves to one-day project activities, while The Boiler Room, and manager Colin Cabe, depend on loyal volunteers to help run the business day by day.

The Boiler Room provides a sense of belonging and continuous learning. It’s a place where one can always feel welcomed.

Cabe is a prime example. He moved to Port Townsend when he was young. He didn’t know anyone and said he was struggling socially. The Boiler Room was a place he could call his own.

In discussing our favorite things that came from our experiences at The Boiler Room, Cabe said it was the surprises.

“The fact that I don’t know who I’m going to see when I walk through the door, or what’s going to be going on. I may walk into a book group discussing the classics or I might walk into midday metal [sic].”

I loved seeing how many gifted people spend their time there. I also loved the generosity and recognition given by the people.

Typical to any nonprofit are challenges.

For The Boiler Room, a bad reputation around town and misconceptions in schools are examples. For a short time, The Boiler Room was located in Uptown. The generation of people carrying the business were “a bit abrasive and isolationist,” and only welcomed those who were already associated with the organization, some said.

Parents would hear thirdhand stories of incidents that occurred there, and although it was a short-lived chapter of The Boiler Room, it has “remained a conclusion in a lot of the older generation’s minds.”

When I went around and asked my classmates what their thoughts were of The Boiler Room, I got answers like “It’s a place with a lot of drugs,” “My mom says not to go in there” and “I don’t want to go in alone.”

Cabe addressed these stereotypes, commenting, “The amount of stuff that we do, try to do and the number of different people we represent makes it challenging for people to integrate and get to know The Boiler Room. It’s a lot easier to dismiss it as the edgy place where bad kids hang out.”

When I first decided to volunteer at The Boiler Room, I, too, was influenced by people’s opinions of the place, but gaining job experience, meeting new people and learning of the immense inaccuracies associated with it was an eye-opening journey into the nonprofit world.

It’s a safe space to help individuals grow and improve, and has been adopted as a home by many of the volunteers and customers who have decided to learn about the true intentions of the community inside.

(Shauna Lynch graduated from Port Townsend High School and plans to enroll at Western Washington University. She hopes to teach English as a second language overseas someday.)