Volunteers give Carpentersville teen center a makeover

High schoolers who frequent the Boys & Girls Clubs of Dundee Township's teen center in Carpentersville are in for a big — and hopefully useful — surprise.

For Comcast Cares Day on Saturday, nearly 100 volunteers labored to give a major makeover to the Paul Knox Teen Center, which now features an Internet Essentials lab. The job included painting, installing new flooring and track lighting, assembling new computer desks, setting up new TVs and computers, and even creating a “bistro” area that serves coffee.

The whole idea is to give the center a more “grown-up” feel, so teens are enticed to use the center to work on their resumes and build their job-readiness skills, said Boys & Girls Clubs of Dundee Township CEO Curt McReynolds.

“It's amazing,” McReynolds said. “We are so happy to partner with Comcast.”

Comcast employees and their families comprised the majority of the volunteers, but there were also several people from Starbucks and the teen center, said Steve Mok, technical operations supervisor for Comcast. K40 Electronics of Elgin took care of all the flooring, he said.

Mok, like many of the volunteers, took his kids to the event.

“The whole idea is strengthening the communities in which we live and work in,” said Mok, of Crystal Lake.

The little ones helped set up garden planters with onion, tomato and pepper plants.

“It was really fun,” said 9-year-old Zach Wilken, of Gilberts, whose dad works for Comcast. “The grown-ups raked all the dirt around, so it wasn't too hard.”

Comcast Cares Day was held in 42 states and included 6,800 volunteers throughout 84 sites in Illinois, said Chris Nelson, manager of government and regulatory affairs for Comcast. Nelson, of West Dundee, also serves on the Boys and Girls' Club board.

Comcast just launched its Internet Essentials program, aimed at giving low-cost Internet to families whose kids are on the federally assisted school meal program, Nelson said.