THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 8, 1995 TAG: 9506060071
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JOAN C. STANUS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 246 lines
IN THEIR OWN WAY, they're working to make a difference in the lives of Norfolk's youth.
Employees in the city's Division of Social Services stretch forms, end-over-end, across middle school classrooms to show eighth-grade students the overwhelming amount of paperwork they'll have to fill out to apply for welfare.
Then the students are given an average monthly welfare check to budget.
``It's shocking for them,'' admits Patricia Bryant, a benefits program manager who oversees the division's Personal Life Choices Curriculum. ``They have no idea what being on welfare is really like. Our purpose is to show them
Norfolk police officers have taken a different tack to make an impact on the city's youth. Since 1991, the department has operated a year-round athletic league as well as an Explorer Scouting post to give inner-city kids something constructive to do with their time.
``It gives us an opportunity to go into neighborhoods where kids are idle and give them an activity to keep them out of trouble and away from drugs,'' said Sgt. Wally R. Driskell Jr., the officer in charge of the police department's crime prevention unit. ``This also gives us a chance to show them that we're not always the bad guys locking them up in jail . . . that we're playmates, friends and role models.''
Within the community, residents have banded together to sponsor canoe trips, rock-climbing exhibitions and fishing tournaments for kids who can't or don't want to participate in sports. Volunteers with a Huntersville urban ministry use the latest educational computer technology weekday afternoons to tutor high-risk youth who have learning disabilities.
Members of a Norfolk church help sixth-graders prepare for taking the state's literacy test. A career club sponsored by the Norfolk Community Services Board gives kids from public housing a chance to live on a college campus each summer. ODU students assist with inner-city basketball and baseball teams. ``Buddies'' for the juvenile court system drive families of youthful offenders to Richmond correctional centers for visits. And local business executives help schoolchildren understand economics by starting their own companies.
``There are so many programs and community volunteers doing such wonderful things for our city's youth,'' said Lee Ann Avery, chairwoman of the Norfolk Youth Services Citizen Advisory Board. ``We just wanted to recognize them.''
Appointed by the Norfolk City Council, the state advisory board recently cited 11 Norfolk programs as making an ``exemplary impact'' on the city's youth.
The programs cited were:
The Applied Economics Program.
Through Junior Achievement of Greater Hampton Roads Inc., business executives have been coming into Norfolk high school classrooms for the last 13 years to serve as student mentors and help social studies teachers with economics lessons. The goal of the partnership program is to offer students economic theory they can directly relate to their lives. They learn by organizing and running their own companies for a semester, either in actuality or through computer simulation.
``Students sell stock, do some market research, produce and sell a product they have created,'' explained Charles Broach, educational services manager for the area Junior Achievement program. ``They are taught all the aspects of how to run a business and do well.''
Broach said that research conducted by a national evaluation firm found that students in the program score higher on standardized tests than those taking traditional economics classes.
The Bayview, East Ocean View, Tarrallton Recreation Support Program, known as BETS.
In 1991, residents of three east-side Norfolk neighborhoods saw a need for an alternative recreational program for kids ``who fall through the cracks.''
``There's all kinds of funding and support for kids in organized sports, but there's a large number of kids who cannot or will not get involved in organized sports,'' explained Virginia Roger, a Bayview civic leader who helped found the program. ``We wanted to provide them with some outdoor activities.''
As a result, the residents hooked up with staff from the city's Parks and Recreation Department and began offering a series of outdoor adventure programs for kids in their neighborhoods.
Now, each year from March through October, about 100 children between 6 and 13 go camping, sailing, canoeing, rock climbing and fishing. Volunteers and city recreation staff serve as chaperones.
``The whole idea is that none of the kids get left on the bench,'' Roger said. ``We want to build their self-esteem ... so they all participate and they're all all-stars.''
The nonprofit BETS Advisory Board provides funding for all of the equipment and supplies.
Buddies on the Road.
Twice a month on Sundays, volunteers with the Friends of the Norfolk Juvenile Court drive family members to five correctional facilities near Richmond to visit their children. Without the free transportation, many families would go months, sometimes years, without seeing their children.
``Our aim is to make changes in the lives of these juveniles,'' said Linda Woods, volunteer/mentoring coordinator for the program. ``We can't do that if families can't maintain contact.''
Families must make advance reservations, and many times the van is full by the time they sign up. With more volunteers, Woods said the program could get another van.
``Every time we talk about cutting this program, our volunteers will not let us,'' Woods said. ``They see how important it is to these families to visit their children.''
Huntersville Program for Gang and Drug Prevention.
With $95,000 in seed money from a federal grant, volunteer mentors with the Urban Discovery Ministries Inc. have brought the latest computer technology and educational software to high-risk students in Huntersville.
The 26 kids in the program, ages 8 to 18, are paired with a community volunteer who serves as a mentor and tutor. Several afternoons each week they meet at the Huntersville Recreation Center for homework and counseling sessions, usually with CD-ROM computers. Most of the kids have learning problems.
``The multimedia software they use is geared for individual lessons,'' explained Mike Fariss, executive director of the ministry. ``They're not just playing games on these computers; they're learning everything from pre-reading to GED preparation.''
The whole purpose of the program, which also has received some funding from the city and several corporations, is to prevent kids from dropping out of school.
``From working with them in the recreation center, we were counseling them and coaching them, but we weren't translating that to their educational environment,'' Farris said. ``When they'd lose their sports eligibility, we'd find out they were having problems in school. By then, it was too late.''
Norfolk Career Club.
For two hours after school, twice a week, kids from Bowling Green and the Berkley communities meet with volunteers to work on homework, discuss career goals, talk about the perils of substance abuse, or take field trips to the theater, the symphony, the zoo or Nauticus.
Each summer, these inner-city kids also live on a Virginia college campus for a week.
``We want to give kids an alternative, to show them there is a different lifestyle than the one they're used to,'' said Rose Duke, program coordinator for the Norfolk Community Services Board. The board's Prevention Services Department operates and funds the career club.
``By providing them with mentors, we're also giving them a type of parental support that hasn't always been there for them.''
The program has become so popular among kids aged 10 to 14 in the two neighborhoods that there's a waiting list to join the club, Duke said.
``We could expand if we had more volunteers,'' she said. ``We have the kids who want to join.''
Personal Life Choices Curriculum.
Four years ago, in a brainstorming session, staff of Norfolk's social services decided to initiate a welfare prevention program that would give the city's youth a reality check.
In March 1993, volunteers from the department started their program at Ruffner Middle School. Since then, Patricia Bryant, one of the program's coordinators, says the curriculum has become such a success that social workers, clerks, eligibility workers, ``everybody in the agency,'' offers to go into eighth-grade health and physical education classrooms across the city to enlighten kids about what it means to be on welfare.
Now, social services staff and school officials are considering extending the program into elementary school classrooms.
``This really reinforces why they should stay in school,'' Bryant said. ``When we're done, students realize that welfare is not as glorified as they might have thought''
While Bryant admits the program is ``not an end-all'' to solving the problems of welfare, she stressed, ``It's a beginning.''
The PACE Athletic League.
Since the police department's crime prevention unit began an athletic league four years ago, some 600 boys and girls in Norfolk's public housing neighborhoods have gotten a chance to play organized volleyball, basketball, football, softball and baseball each season.
``Many of these kids never had access to sports like Little League before,'' the police department's Driskell said.
Through a partnership with the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, police officers train coaches, organize play, and provide equipment and transportation to games. The officers also organize a number of field trips for the kids.
Explorer Post 191.
Another project sponsored by the police department's crime prevention unit, the Scouting post was initiated in 1983 for boys and girls, ages 14 to 20.
``The program is geared toward those teenagers who may have a desire to go into law enforcement, although it's not limited to them,'' Driskell said.
Affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America, the Explorers receive some of the same training police recruits do, including classes in ``build-and-search'' techniques, advanced first aid and CPR, and other basic police procedures. Many of the Scouts help officers direct traffic at parades, work in the emergency dispatch center or run errands in department offices.
``We give them tasks that make them feel good about themselves and provide them with a sense of accomplishment that builds their self-esteem,'' Driskell said. ``We need to take the lead on this kind of thing.''
Praxis.
Last year, almost a dozen ODU students helped coach inner-city kids involved in the PACE Athletic League.
The Praxis program, sponsored by the ODU Presbyterian and Methodist campus ministries, periodically targets outreach programs in the Norfolk community where students can lend a helping hand.
Truancy Action Program.
Keeping high-risk teenagers at Lafayette-Winona Middle School motivated to stay in school is the aim of this program, sponsored by Norfolk's social services department.
Coordinator John L. Horton spends mornings at the school and afternoons at facilities in Diggs Town and Oakleaf public housing neighborhoods, monitoring, motivating and counseling some 120 kids and their families. The families, mostly headed by single mothers, are all on welfare.
``Our aims are simple,'' said Horton, an ex-Marine. ``To get these kids to go to school at least 90 percent of the time, maintain a `C' or 2.0 grade point average and have their mothers actively involved in their educational process.''
To help keep the teens and their families motivated, Horton has enlisted the help of the Marines of Company A at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base. Each year, the Marines sponsor field trips, holiday parties and dinners for the families.
``They have done a lot for me and my kids,'' Horton said. ``Everybody talks the talk, but the Marines walk the walk.''
The MARC Program.
Last year, some 75 students from Ruffner Middle School who live in Young Park and Tidewater Gardens came to St. John's A.M.E. Church on Bute Street each weekday afternoon to receive intensive tutoring from church volunteers.
The sessions have one main purpose: to get these fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders ready to take the state literacy test.
Funded entirely by the church, the program has helped participants acquire skills in reading, writing and mathematics that many have lacked, said Fred M. Oliver, assistant to the Norfolk public schools superintendent.
Last year, 87.5 percent of the kids in the program passed at least one of the skills tests. Thirty-one percent passed all three.
``I nominated the church for the award because this is a program that we feel really helps our schoolchildren,'' Oliver said. ``Those church members have made a real difference in the lives of these kids.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
MAKING AN IMPACT ON YOUTH
Photo by GARY C. KNAPP
Tanya THurston makes it to the top of the wall at the Virginia Rock
Climbing Indoor Gym during an outing of the Bayview, East Ocen View,
Tarrallton Recreation Support Program.
Photo by L. TODD SPENCER
India Knight competes in a relay race at Booker T. Washington High
School during an activity of the PACE Athletic League
Photo by L. TODD SPENCER
Jennifer Wells urges on 7-year-old Travis Smith during a PACE
Athletic League track event.
Photo by GARY C. KNAPP
Bob Sober tutors Donald Butts, 12, as part of the Huntersville
Program for Gang and Drug Prevention.
Photo by GARY C. KNAPP
Mary Williams helps Antonio Jones, 11, practice his writing skills
as part of the Huntersville program.
by CNB