Youth center offers more activities for teens Published July 11, 2012 By Senior Airman Clayton Lenhardt 39th Air Base Wing Public Affairs INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey -- Families gathered at the Incirlik Youth Center July 7 to celebrate the opening of the new High School Room. Available for teens in high school, the room offers teens more ways to spend their free time. Teenagers at Incirlik lack a lot of the options for activities here compared to what they would find in the U.S. "There's not much outside for them. They're not driving at 16 (years old) here and going to the mall. So this revamping of the High School Room, the teen program, is opening up the youth center to the teens, and they're seeing what we have to offer," said Marcus Grothues, youth program manager. "The revamp of the High School Room was to encourage the high schoolers to use the youth center." Approximately 20 teenagers and their parents attended the opening. "When it opened, the teens stayed the whole night at the youth center. They didn't leave until we locked the doors at 10 o'clock, and they probably would have stayed until midnight if we let them," Grothues said. The entire project cost less than $5,000 with money raised by Keystone, a club for 14 to 18 year olds, and donations from the Incirlik Combined Spouses' Club. With a goal of giving teenagers ownership of the project and to be more involved, Grothues said most of the ideas came from them. The High School Room includes a 60-inch 3-D plasma TV, 3-D Blu-ray player and a Sony PlayStation 3, as well as several other TVs and game systems. From picking out the colors to use and the actual painting, and arranging of the furniture, the teens did the decorating themselves. The hours of operation are 2:30 - 7 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 2:30 - 8 p.m. Fridays, and 1- 8 p.m. Saturday. For more information, contact the youth center at DSN 676-6670.