By Tina Dirmann
staff writer for BCBS of Louisiana Foundation
I want to dedicate this post to our partners at GRoW (Great Resources WhereY’at), in recognition of their successful transition to a new site for their exciting Saturday program for kids in the Gentilly/New Orleans East area. We’ve highlighted GRoW’s program on this blog before — noting the amazing selection of activities offered to participants — karate, dance, cooking class, biking, yoga and basketball, to name a few. All free (supported, in part, by a $900,000 grant from Challenge for a Healthier Louisiana). The point, says GRoW project leader Mat Schwarzman, is to engage kids in play and activity with their neighbors. With more and more kids in our post-Katrina world attending charter schools, which are often located far beyond the reach of their own neighborhoods, kids are loosing the ability to simply play with a neighbor. Home “play time,” therefore, falls into the electronic realm, as kids no longer know, let alone play with, the kid next door.
It’s an ambitious project, one that is supposed to reattach local community ties, along with bolstering active, healthy play.
But it’s been a struggle finding the right “hub” for this fantastic initiative. A school site seemed logical, given classrooms aren’t typically in use GRoWon Saturdays. But the doors would be open for any kid wanting to participate, whether they attended that school or not. It sounded like a reasonable plan. But that plan has proved challenging.
GRoW just relocated to its third school site. As Schwarzman explains it, “Finding the right schools to partner with has been a tremendous challenge for us. In the highly competitive environment of New Orleans school choice, few want to dedicate precious facilities and utilities’ costs to kids who live in the neighborhood but attend other schools.”
But Schwarzman, and GRoW coordinator Danielle Burrell, have high hopes for their newest home – Medard H. Nelson Charter School.
Last Saturday was the second weekend at Nelson. And worries were high that attendance would drop-off (a combination of losing kids from the previous charter school site, while struggling to introduce the program to new neighbors). Happily, many of those worries were for naught. On the first weekend, more than 70 kids turned out to dance, cook and karate-chop their way through a Saturday afternoon. And last Saturday, when I was there, upwards of 50 kids turned-out, with even more streaming through the door as the hours wore on.
“We did a lot of work on retention over the break,” said Burrell, noting her staff personally called, texted and emailed all active parents to let them know of the location change. “We weren’t going to lose anybody, if we could help it. We wanted them to connect to us, our program, not just the school site. We wanted to enforce the message that we are community based, not school based. We didn’t want anyone thinking, ‘we can go there now because we don’t go to that school.’”
We’ll hear more from Burrell soon, in a separate blog, on the challenges GRoW has faced since launching last year.
But for now, last Saturday, in particular, was bustling with activity out in the school’s yard, where elementary school students and a few dozen Xavier University students pitched in for the day’s community service project — maintenance work! They pulled weeds from the outdoor garden, raked leaves, re-stained weather-worn wooden benches, hammered at dilapidated flower beds. Previously, the play areas on the school’s black top got special attention, as volunteers repainted faded lines for hop-scotch, relay racing and basketball.
“We’re doing this to promote the idea of community schools,” said Peyton Juneau, project coordinator for HandsOn New Orleans (part of the GRoW collaborative network). “A day like this helps reweave community ties and introduces people who might not otherwise work together for change.”
“The college volunteers kind of become mentors for the day to these kids,” Juneau said. “And the cool thing is, when you look around, you don’t see a lot of these kids texting on phones. They are engaged, working and having fun doing it. That’s a triumphant in itself!”
The community service project was GRoW’s 5th since launching last fall. Way to go, guys…
