Case Study 16B

The Committee for Hispanic Children and Families After-School Program at PS/MS 279

Christopher E. Smith and Lisa M. DeBellis

The Committee for Hispanic Children and Families (CHCF), a community-based organization operating in New York City, was founded in 1982 to be a voice for the Latino community at the local, state, and national levels, and to develop programs that address the needs of Latino children and their families. The organization provides many services, including programs focusing on early care and youth development, after school, dropout prevention, healthy living, responsible fatherhood, family literacy, and adolescent pregnancy prevention. CHCF’s after-school program at PS/MS 279 Captain Manuel Rivera Jr. School is a TASC-model program that offers academic support, sports and arts enrichment, and community service opportunities to elementary and middle school students. The program is open every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. during the school year. This program serves as an excellent model for promoting students’ prosocial development in the after-school context, and in this profile, we will describe several student-run community service activities and events that they have convened.

PS/MS 279 is located in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx. The majority of enrolled students are of Hispanic descent (78 percent), and 91 percent are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, 2011). CHCF’s after-school program at PS/MS 279 draws approximately three hundred students from the day school. The program offers activities and special events that address the needs of the school’s students and neighboring community. Helena Yordan has served as the program coordinator since 1999, and one of her main objectives in this time has been motivating students to take responsibility for their community. She believes that a trademark of the program is the students’ belief in their ability to make a difference, and they receive plenty of support from their program leaders to do so. One way staff members provide this support is through a community development activity that is offered to first- through eighth-grade attendees. In this activity, staff members teach students about the importance of community and character building.

Staff members use the curriculum materials from the generationOn youth service organization with fifth- through eighth-grade participants to promote this positive behavior (GenerationOn, n.d.). This curriculum teaches students to identify the needs and issues of their community, think about reasons why these issues are occurring, and come up with solutions that can help address these issues. For the past several years, the fifth- through eighth-grade students have created and developed several projects that have made a lasting impact, as described below. These students come up with the projects as a group and then get the younger (first through fourth grade) participants to help organize them. Older students enjoy having the responsibility of developing the projects, and younger students look up to them and eagerly anticipate the moment when they will have this opportunity. Thus, all students in this program view these community-building activities as a privilege, not an obligation.

The longest-running community project created by students in this program is an annual Breast Cancer Awareness walk. Six years ago, one student’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, and he wanted to call more attention to the issue. He and his classmates developed the idea for an awareness walk, and then, with Helena’s help, they started gathering information from hospitals and libraries. After learning more about the topic, students made packets with information to distribute to community members and encouraged family members and neighbors to get mammograms as part of their preparation for the event. The walk was a great success, and family and community members quickly took notice. Each year, the event has grown in stature, and this year, over 350 people in the school and community participated.

CHCF students have created several other annual charitable events at PS/MS 279. For the past five years, this program has held a coat drive for homeless citizens in November to help the less fortunate survive the winter months. Students begin to collect the coats by the beginning of October from friends, family, and community members and then accompany a staff member on Saturdays to wash them at a local Laundromat. Over two hundred coats were collected this past year, and a community church helped to distribute them. Also, each December, students collect toys to distribute to hospitalized children. Toys are collected from a variety of sources, including school and after-school staff members, family, and community members, to ensure that all children at Montefiore Hospital can receive a gift during the holidays. This past year, students made cards and wrote letters to the recipients, and staff distributed the toys at the hospital.

Their final annual event is a soup kitchen, which takes place in PS/MS 279’s cafeteria. For this event, students and their family members come together to cook and serve meals to the needy. Students are involved in all aspects of this initiative. To advertise for the event, students make flyers that are sent to the local senior center, HIV center, and other targeted locations. They also draft a letter that is distributed to every participant’s family, urging them to donate an item, and the response has been overwhelming. This past year, 400 to 450 people were served, and students and parents played a role in serving the food, cleaning up, and even participating in a show to entertain the audience. Incredibly, students have worked on other projects in addition to these annual events. In 2010, when an earthquake devastated Haiti, students collected medical supplies to send to the country. In addition, students started a fund-raiser for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and collected over eight hundred dollars.

How is it possible for one program to work on all of these initiatives? When presented with this question, Helena acknowledged that she has a great group of staff members and students. She also believes that day school staff members do not get an opportunity to work on these types of events in the regular school day, which is why they are eager to contribute. However, it took time for these events to garner the enthusiasm and commitment that they receive today. Program leaders needed time to learn how to organize and promote events of this magnitude. While experience helped them overcome these obstacles, funding remains a challenge. Helena admits that oftentimes her staff members must work on the weekends or stay late to finish up projects or prepare materials for an upcoming event. With a very small budget, the program often relies on extremely dedicated staff members to work extra hours to ensure that the events and activities are successful. The program has also hosted several fund-raisers to help them obtain funding for these initiatives. For example, the program hosts an annual talent show featuring students from the program. Students sell tickets to their families, friends, and community members for three dollars each. All of the money raised through ticket sales helps to pay for things like supplies and materials needed for their food and toy drives.

When asked what advice she would give to other after-school program coordinators looking to offer these types of prosocial community-building opportunities, Helena stressed the importance of teamwork. In order for the events and activities discussed above to have meaning and be successful, buy-in and cooperation are necessary from all stakeholders, including the students themselves, their families, program staff members, schoolteachers and administration, and community members. She also stressed the importance of being flexible and open to the ideas of others, especially those of the students. According to Helena, the success of the program is dependent on bringing everyone’s ideas together and implementing them seamlessly. In the future, Helena would love to see her program team up with other after-school programs across the city (and maybe even across the state and country) to coordinate and participate in events that will truly make a difference in students’ lives and communities.

For More Information

The Committee for Hispanic Children and Families: http://www.chcfinc.org

References

Center for New York City Affairs at the New School. (2011). P.S. 279 Captain Manuel Rivera Jr. School. Retrieved September 1, 2011, from http://insideschools.org/browse/school/445

GenerationOn. (n.d.). Lessons and guides. Retrieved from http://www.generationon.org/teachers/lessons-and-guides