Summer in the cities
Planning and executing an outdoor festival for 1,000 people isn’t your typical teenage summer job, but 100 Boston-area teenagers employed as junior counselors in the Phillips Brooks House Association’s (PBHA) summer camps pulled it off without a hitch. The junior counselors, who have been earning paychecks at a dozen Harvard student-run day camps in Cambridge and Boston neighborhoods this summer, were the brains and brawn behind a midsummer celebration that transformed the sleepy green hills of Stony Brook Park in Jamaica Plain into a festival stage on July 25. The festival supported Boston Moves for Health, Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s campaign to improve health and fitness in Boston. The program supplemented mainstay events like sack races and a popular talent show with a basketball tournament, a salsa dancing class, and a Zumba class. Nearly 100 campers participated, following every Zumba kick and salsa swing. At each event, local teens armed with pedometers...