At 27, Zac Cowan has been lucky enough to find his passion: helping his community and giving kids a space place to be just that, kids.

Above the Cairn Coffee shop, people can find Cowan smiling and bantering as he watches over the future leaders of Winchester, playing video games, Ping-Pong and air-hockey.

After making sure all was good in his neighborhood, this young Mr. Rogers stepped aside to talk with The Winchester Sun about the importance of the Rowland Arts Center and his love for encouraging the next generation of leaders.

Winchester Sun: How long have you been working with the teen center?

Zac Cowan: I’ve pretty much been around since it started. I’ve been volunteering here since about the beginning.

It was originally owned by a church that I also work for, Calvary Christian Church.

I was helping up there; we do a bunch of church activities up there.

When we started our tutoring program “Mentors and Meals,’ about three years ago, that’s when I was beginning to get hired on, I was just like a contract employee.

(Joseph Miller) would hire me on throughout the school year as his assistant for that tutoring program, and this is the first year where I’ve been able to be hired on as a full-time employee.

WS: What drove you to go from just volunteering to want to work in the RAC?

ZC: I’m just super invested in the whole thing. I love everything about this building and what it stands for and what it’s here to do for the community.

I just fell in love with its mission and wanted to be a part of it as much as I possibly could. When the opportunity came for me to work instead of just volunteer, I was all about it.

WS: What is it that you do here?

ZC: My role is the assistant programming director. 

My role is basically to work with all the day-to-day things, so all the drop-in hours that we have where kids just come. My role is to be there and hang out with the kids and work on all those things.

I plan all the events like we have parties we like to throw during the school year called “fifth-quarters.” We have them after Friday night home football games. We’ll invite middle- and high-schoolers to come in after the game to hang out. We throw a party here until about midnight upstairs. We just play games; we have food. There are normally some prizes and things like that.

We have a safe place for everyone to go hangout instead of, maybe, an alternative after party that some of the kids might go that might be a little more dangerous or a little more risky. We have something a little more wholesome…I plan different events like that.

I help out with our summer program. I help schedule all the classes we might do on Wednesday. Like our cooking classes, or I help plan some of our Friday events, hiking…

Those are the kinds of things that I plan and help assist [Miller] with while he works on, maybe, some of the bigger stuff like grant writing or going to meet with his board or something like that.

WS: Was there anything like this for you when you were growing up?

ZC: Not really. No, this is a fairly new concept.

I grew up in a church, and so there was always some space for me to hang out in, but there wasn’t something like this necessarily, not something so… in the community.

WS: What’s something you love about what you do working here?

ZC: I love the opportunity I get to personally invest in this community and the next generation coming up in it.

I love being able to serve in a space that is safe for the kids who live here in the downtown area and all across Winchester because there are kids that come from different circumstances and different lives, but they come to the teen center, and its a level playing field for them.

Everyone can find their common ground to be in.

There is a real sense of community in that where they can get past some of the things they might see at a school, and they can just hang out with each other here.

There’s a space also for kids in this area that don’t really have anyone to care for them, to be there to say, ‘Hey you matter, here’s a space for you to matter and be valued and be poured into and invested in.’

WS: Why is having something like this established in the community important for the kids in the area?

ZC: I think it provides a safe space for the kids where I’m not sure there is a whole lot of that sometimes. They could wonder in downtown Winchester, or they could go anywhere, but I like knowing there is some space for them that they can come and be themselves, just a safe space where they can hang out.

I think that’s important for them to have more spaces like that where they feel cared for, where they feel seen, and they know they can relax and not have to worry about something because one day they’ll be adults and they’ll be leaders in the downtown area, and then we have a chance to tell them, “Hey you can do something incredible. You have a chance to be something better, and you can invest in the community that’s investing in you, and you can pour right back into it. I think that’s cool.”