THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 27, 1996 TAG: 9603270401
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Long : 129 lines
It doesn't look like a combat zone from the road, this quiet, modern community college building surrounded by tree-shaded homes and fallow fields. But a guerrilla battle wages under its green metal roof. The enemy: welfare.
It's just a minor, little-noticed skirmish in the much larger, much more-publicized war on welfare. It's being fought through one of the myriad programs operating under grants - government, private or combination - aimed at helping people become educated or trained and, ultimately, employed and self-sufficient.
The particular campaign here, on the Oliver K. Hobbs Campus of Paul D. Camp Community College, is called the Gender Equity Program. Participants and school administrators call the program a success.
But the people who run such programs - and the participants who benefit from them - are anxious these days. In Washington there are loud calls for cutting budgets and rolling federal programs into block grants that states can administer as they please. The people at the college won't know until May whether the Gender Equity Program will continue after almost a decade on campus. They're hopeful, but nothing's certain.
Almost nothing. ``There certainly is a need for it,'' argues Joyce M. Hickman, the program's director.
The goal of the 20-year-old federal program, which has operated in Virginia since 1978, is three-pronged:
Assist single parents, single pregnant high-school graduates and homemakers ``displaced'' by abuse or abandonment.
Enable young women to support themselves and their families.
Eliminate gender bias and stereotyping.
Tall orders. What it comes down to is providing financial help for tuition and books, child care, transportation and counseling for young parents - three of the participants are single fathers - who probably couldn't attend college otherwise. The program helps them gain the education they need to unlock opportunities for better lives for themselves and their families.
And because families headed by single mothers form the bulk of welfare recipients, the program can serve as a pre-emptive strike against the need for public assistance.
That's the global view. Sonya D. Cherry provides an individual, human view.
She's a 24-year-old freshman from Suffolk and the single mother of two boys. She's been on public assistance. She worked for three years at a homeless shelter at near-minimum wage with no raise, living paycheck to paycheck. She wants better.
She enrolled at Paul D. Camp in the fall and studies administration of justice while working part time in the college's admissions and financial-aid office. She's planning to move on to a four-year college and become a juvenile-probation officer.
The Gender Equity Program helps pay for her sons' care and her car's gas.
``Without that, I probably wouldn't be here, to be honest with you,'' Cherry says. She's sitting in the admissions office in a working-woman's suit, smiling shyly but easily.
``I always wanted to go to school,'' she says. ``I knew once I got my foot in the door. . . . I knew then I could continue. I was not going anywhere.''
Taxpayers this year are spending $75,000 on the Gender Equity Program at the Hobbs campus; the same amount is spent on a sister program at Paul D. Camp's Franklin Campus. These are relatively small bucks in the multibillion-dollar world of the government, but it's enough to help Cherry and 53 other students out of the 700 or so taking classes at the Hobbs site.
``It's important, it's crucial, it's very beneficial,'' says W. Ross Boone, director of academic programs on the campus. ``It's just what it says: It's the `opportunity' part.''
In addition to developing career skills, the program benefits the school by adding diversity - economic and social - to the student body, Boone says.
``These students are performing and performing well,'' he says. ``So there's a talent base there that's untapped.''
In the four school years from 1991 to 1995, the program on the Suffolk campus averaged 76 participants a year, taking varying course loads; 35 graduated in that time.
Not all of the participating students are on welfare or in danger of it. Some are married, some have grown children, some have grandchildren. All showed that they needed some assistance to get them over the college hump.
And while the money helps, the students say the support they receive from each other and the program director, Hickman, often is the bigger help.
Everyone in the program signs a pledge saying that, in addition to maintaining satisfactory grades, they'll attend two support-group meetings and at least one workshop each month.
Workshop topics range from stress reduction to parenting skills to job-hunting tips.
They also are required to see Hickman once a week - in her office, the hall, the student center, anywhere - so she knows how they're doing.
Her students are all parents. They're usually tired and frazzled.
``They're overwhelmed,'' says Hickman, who ran a similar program with welfare-mother high-school dropouts in Washington. ``They're trying to put out fires. . . . To decide to come back to school with all these children - that's a lot.
``It's really a support program, with some financial support, of course. .
Felecia P. Briggs agrees. A veteran of six years in the Army and of public assistance, the 32-year-old divorced mother of two graduated from the program and now studies education at Norfolk State University while working as a secretary on Paul D. Camp Community College's two campuses.
``Sometimes you feel like you can't go on, and you need a little push,'' she says. ``I did, anyway.''
Often it's not strictly about schoolwork. Hickman, a former teacher with a professional background in child development, will advise one student on how to handle a headstrong 5-year-old.
She'll give a pep talk to another who's 25, has five children and is dragging.
While escorting a visitor, the program director peels away for an impromptu discussion with a group of her participants huddled around a table in the student center.
``Miss Hickman - she's concerned,'' says Veronica S. Hall, a 27-year-old single mother watching Hickman laugh with the others. ``She's more concerned on a personal level.''
A war fought one battle at a time. MEMO: DETAILS
For more information on the Gender Equity Program, call Director Joyce
M. Hickman at 925-2431.
ILLUSTRATION: ``IT'S IMPORTANT, IT'S CRUCIAL''
VICKI CRONIS
The Virginian-Pilot
Sonya D. Cherry - the single mother of Mykell, 5, and Rojhaim, 6,
just outside the door - says the Gender Equity Progam is vital.
KEYWORDS: EDUCATION GENDER EQUITY PROGRAM by CNB