What is Kinston Teens?
Since 2014, Kinston Teens has worked at the intersection of youth empowerment and community development.
Kinston Teens, Inc. was founded by (then) 14-year-old Chris Suggs in October 2014 to provide young people the tools, skills, resources, and opportunities to develop solutions to the issues that most affect us. At the time, gun violence and poor neighborhood conditions in East Kinston were two of the most pressing issues affecting our organization’s membership and these issues became core focus areas for our efforts.
Throughout 2014, our city experienced over 60 reported shootings with the average age of victims and offenders in these shootings being 21 years old. That same year, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released a report that East Kinston was home to the #1 most economically distressed census tract in the entire state. While other parts of our city such as our downtown and industrial area have experienced growth and revitalization, this neighborhood—our neighborhood—has been the victim of decades of neglect and disinvestment.
We’re experienced in Community Development.
Over the years, our organization has embarked on several initiatives to serve and improve East Kinston. In 2016, we recognized that the City of Kinston owned over 1,000 vacant and underutilized properties that had become a strain on City resources and an eyesore for the community. Additionally, many of these vacant properties were public safety and health hazards to neighboring residents. We partnered with the City of Kinston to develop the City’s Adopt-a-Vacant Lot program. This effort allowed and supported nonprofit organizations to acquire and beautify these vacant properties and convert them into neighborhood amenities—such as small parks, gardens, and public art installations.
Throughout 2021, Kinston Teens worked with the City of Kinston, American Flood Coalition, and Design Workshop to lead a community planning process for Emma Webb Park. Emma Webb is a seven-acre community park that had previously been neglected and under-resourced. Our organization’s role in this partnership was to empower youth and neighborhood residents to be true stakeholders in this planning process. This project team worked together to gather and translate community input into the Emma Webb Park Master Plan. This plan includes new recreation amenities, a stream restoration effort, and green infrastructure.
It is our goal that the implementation of this plan will make Emma Webb a local and regional model for greenspace restoration and community-centered flood mitigation. This Master Plan has features that serve people of all ages and backgrounds at all times of the year, and improves the park’s ability to provide shade, habitat, stormwater management, and other benefits. This plan was awarded an American Society of Landscape Architects Merit Award in Analysis & Planning at the ASLA’s Southeast Regional Conference in 2023, and the City of Kinston has secured $1 million in funding to implement this project.
Our organization’s most recent effort has been the development of the East Kinston Neighborhood Hub. The purpose of this facility, once an abandoned home that our organization acquired and renovated in 2018, is to serve as a central location, or Hub, for youth-led and neighborhood focused initiatives. Through the Hub, we provide a community pantry, meeting space, and free technology use, as well as host monthly gatherings with free food, health resources, and social opportunities for neighborhood residents. Our desire has been that by creating the Neighborhood Hub, effectively restoring a historic home in disrepair, we will also spur more community development as well as private & public investment in the surrounding area.