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There’s been a lot of excitement in the air, as the Youth Community Assistance Program has been vigorously working on renovating their new home at the old Cox Ford Motor Company building at the corner of Nugent and Hwy 290.

YCAP is a Blanco County, non-profit organization based out of Johnson City. Their sole interest and purpose is to provide a neutral safe haven for Blanco County youth – where the teens can enjoy free food and entertainment with their friends. They have been active and wildly successful for the past six months.

The program has become so successful in fact, that it was determined a new location was going to be needed at the very first YCAP event! To date, YCAP activities have been held at the Family Martial Arts and Fitness Center (the ASB Karate dojo) in Johnson City.

Johnson City Police Chief, Randy Holland, stated "YCAP is about the youth of our town. There have been several different ‘rumors or ideas’ about what exactly is going on over at the old Cox Ford Motor building – so we’d like to invite the public to come and see for their selves what the plans are … We are going to have an Open House this Sunday at 3pm at this new YCAP building to garner interest (and hopefully funds) to show the public what we have planned and have accomplished so far." Chief Holland believes in the program so much so, that he is one of the YCAP board of directors.

First Baptist Church Pastor, Kebirn Rush, is another board member and fervent supporter of YCAP. "The long and the short of it is that the youth of this town have no where safe, clean and fun to go to "hang out" on a regular basis. Small town weekends and summers are filled with boredom and too many idle minds. An idle mind is the devils playground. Imagine a place that is well situated in town that is free for the youth to go and play console games, pool, ping pong, shuffle board, foosball, and just hang out. Did I mention that they could do this all for free?"

YCAP will be holding their monthly meeting this Friday night at the ASB Karate dojo in Johnson City at 7 pm. There will be a gentleman who helped the Boys and Girls Clubs of America program get started in Marble Falls joining their meeting. He will provide the board members with ideas on "what it takes to make these things happen" in a small town, such as Johnson City. Other agenda items to be discussed include fundraising and ways to continuously build community support for YCAP.

"We have a great vision, a great building and a great bunch of youth who show up every Saturday and work for free to make this building into such a place," stated area business owner and YCAP board member – Raymond Weeks. Mr. Weeks has been instrumental in starting the YCAP program, and is driven to help get this program started primarily due to his own personal experiences. "I am a parent of youth in this town. I also grew up in a small town like this. I got in trouble and did things I shouldn’t have when I was growing up, and so have my kids. I know that just because you lead a horse to water doesn’t mean you can make it drink."

However, Weeks also believes that if the community doesn’t provide the youth in town an alternative, they will find other things to keep themselves busy.

"Let’s face it. When teens are not given other options – they tend to make poor choices out of boredom. They are tempted to do other things, such as drugs, alcohol, having under aged, unsafe sex. Two truths of all human beings are that we will all be presented with opportunities and we will all develop relationships of some kind… and in the absence of light there is darkness. In the absence of good there is evil. In the absence of providing a place where our youth can develop positive relationships and develop the great opportunities before them, they will find the alternative," Weeks added.

So on behalf of the youth of Blanco County, and the YCAP Board Members – the community is invited to the old Cox Ford Motor building on Sunday at 3 pm to find out more information regarding YCAP – as well as to hear more information regarding their mission and vision statement. The Johnson City City Council, as well as several local business leaders have already jumped on board with the Youth Community Assistance Program, and they would like the full community to jump on board with them. Lunch will be sold at the meeting as a fundraiser.

YCAP Board Members include: Johnson City Chief of Police Randy Holland, First Baptist Church Pastor Kebirn Rush, DPS Officer Mike Bacon, LBJ MS Teacher Josh Gissel and Raymond Weeks of Family Martial Arts and Fitness.