BIF-8 Storyteller Spotlight: Hillary Salmons | Business Innovation ...

Ah, those middle school years. If we could all get in touch with our inner pre-adolescent personality, we might have a deeper understanding of who we are now.

Hillary Salmons thinks so, anyway. As executive director of the Providence After School Alliance (PASA), a progressive afterschool program for middle school students in Providence, R.I., Salmons has not forgotten her own ?awkward? passage through this stage of life. And yet, she cherishes it.

When she was in middle school, Salmons was the oldest of five children and always in charge of making sure everyone had fun without getting hurt. Even at that early stage, her talents leaned in the direction of community organization. She put on puppet shows and did fundraisers.

Once, she held a carnival to raise money for her friend?s father, a fireman whose department was in dire need of an additional firetruck: ?So I said, ?Patty, let?s have a carnival and raise money for your father so they can buy a new truck.? We raised $50. I?ve been doing this stuff all my life.?

Salmons made the most of her middle school years, but she knows it?s not easy. Surging hormones and powerful emotions do battle every day with the brain?s natural urge to think critically. ?It?s the most trying time of human development,? she notes. ?It?s equivalent to learning how to walk and talk.?

But there are some highly positive attributes associated with this age. The middle schooler, according to Salmons, is ?wise and honest, high energy, a very social beast.?

I'm not an idea person. I see solutions in other people's work. I'm curious about how people solve problems.

Middle schoolers are thinking for the first time about how they will function in a world beyond their families. They are beginning to put their dreams into action. They join clubs, become Eagle Scouts, build forts, dress up, and spin out imaginary worlds in which they are the primary players. These activities often set the stage for what comes later.

?It?s amazing how much those experiences inform our passions today,? Salmons says.

Salmons own middle school penchant for community action marked the start of a path that led her to PASA. She?s still organizing carnivals, only now they are put on for middle schoolers in Providence who would otherwise be sitting home in front of a TV, or out in the streets looking for something to do. She?s figured out a way to provide them with activities that keep them safe while tapping into their intense curiosity with PASA?s AfterZone, an extensive potpourri of creative, intellectual, and physical activities provided by 80 different community partners in Providence.

Salmons says she?s a ?systems thinker,? an experiential learner who has a knack for pulling people together: ?I?m not an idea person. I see solutions in other people?s work. I?m curious about how people solve problems.?

Years ago, when she was living in Japan with her investment banker husband, she found herself gravitating away from the gated atmosphere of the American community there and toward the European expatriates who held together so effortlessly as a group.

?We would gather around the field hockey field or watch a soccer game,? she recalls. ?Someone would play bagpipes and we?d all share in a picnic lunch. There would be three-legged races. We did sports with our kids.?

In a way, Salmons says, the experience she had in Japan was like living in a small village where casual rituals build community. It is the effect she shoots for with the AfterZone, which combines ?chill time? and reading with some structured learning. The point is to give kids a safe place to stretch themselves and have fun.

But it?s tough to approximate the village life Salmons grew up with or the one she experienced with her European friends in Japan. ?We have a more transient society, and transience is a huge problem,? she notes.

All the more reason, in her mind, to apply systems thinking to community solutions that pull people together. She did it with her carnivals. She did it in Japan. She?s doing it in Providence, a city she loves, because ?it has all the ingredients.? At the same time, she?s nurturing the passions of today?s middle schoolers who will soon be the ones finding the solutions.

www.mypasa.org
@mypasa

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