Day 103: Be a Role Model

January  is National Mentoring Month.  "The time each year when our nation spotlights the importance of mentors and the need for every child to have a caring adult in his or her life.  When you serve as a mentor, you enrich your own life as much as you do the life of a child."

A caring adult.  Someone who will be there and can be counted on.  Dependable.  Providing a positive example in how to approach challenges.  Demonstrating healthy relationships.  We all need someone like this in our life.  And for some children, this isn't their parents for whatever the reason.  But a mentor can provide this social and emotional construct.  Visit National Mentoring Month and MENTOR to find ways to connect with at-risk youth and help guide them in a positive direction.  

*                                                            *                                                       *

Working at a table crowded with binders and textbooks, Glendale resident Nancy Stein is leading two children through their homework exercises.

"Is that how you spell 'remember?'" she asks. "Sound it out. You are missing some letters."

It is a scene played out each evening in households across the country. But the children, siblings Jenny and Danny Barajas, 9 and 12 years old, respectively, are not Stein's own. And the table is not in the family kitchen, but in the activity room at PATH Achieve, a homeless shelter in south Glendale.

Stein, a volunteer with the nonprofit organization School on Wheels, works to ensure that her students stay on track despite the instability of homeless life. School on Wheels provides a variety of services, including free school supplies, uniforms, school enrollment and parent counseling.

Its primary mission, however, is to foster academic success with one-on-one tutoring. Hundreds of School on Wheels volunteers work at sites across Southern California, including Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

There are more than 35,000 homeless youth enrolled in Los Angeles County schools, according to the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness. Families with young children now account for 40% of the nation's homeless population.

Homeless children face myriad challenges, said Natasha Bayus, School on Wheels regional coordinator for Burbank and Glendale, including limited access to nutritious food and hygiene products. And they are sometimes plagued by social stigma, as well as frequent moves.

"Each time a student moves, they are set back three to four months," Bayus said. "If they move multiple times in a year, they can be behind at least a year of school. They might be working on things like algebra but lacking basic addition and subtraction [skills]."

Parents are typically consumed trying to find steady work and places to live, Bayus said, leaving them little time to go over homework. And in some cases they themselves may be uneducated.

"A lot of the parents might not have graduated high school themselves," Bayus said. "So if the kid is in high school and is working on some advanced problems, it is even harder for those parents to handle those things."

School on Wheels volunteers are seeing more families forced into homelessness due to job loss, eviction and foreclosure, Bayus said. Jenny and Danny's mother, Maria Cardenas, said her family was evicted from their Sun Valley apartment last spring after a dispute with their landlord.

Terrified that her children would be removed from her custody, she tried to hide the family's circumstances, Cardenas said. Each night they parked their car at Sun Valley Park. For four months, the children slept in the vehicle, while their mother slept next to it on the curb. They used the park's pool facilities to bathe.

Eventually, Cardenas was approached by a Los Angeles police officer, who encouraged her to go to a shelter. She is determined to keep her family together, Cardenas said, and with the help of the School on Wheels tutors, her children remain on track at school.

"They are excellent with them, especially [my son]," Cardenas said.

Roberta Lara, a paralegal at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank and a School on Wheels volunteer, said she communicates directly with a client's teacher in order to identify weaknesses, such as reading. Her most recent student made noticeable progress, she said.

"I try to talk to them and make them feel as comfortable as possible," Lara said. "They really open up to me, and I enjoy that."

Watching children not only survive homelessness, but actually thrive, is incredible, Stein said. She has had tutoring relationships that lasted for several years, and others that lasted just a few weeks.

"You don't really know how much effect you had on them," Stein said. "You just hope and pray that somehow you helped them."  Glendale News-Press By Megan O'Neil

Twitter Updates – Follow Good News for Isla on Twitter.

RSS Subscription – Subscribe to Good News for Isla via RSS in a reader.

Email Updates – Sign up for email updates

Day 75: Wise beyond her years

There are some individuals that seem to possess a wisdom that is beyond their current circumstance.  Take for example, Bharti Kumari, a 12-year-old girl in India.  Recognizing the value of education, she is teaching the lessons she is learning to children who don't otherwise have access to it.  That is not the typical response heard from a 12-year-old about going to school.  What about "May I puh-lease stay home?" or "I don't want to do my homework!"  No, she understands the ultimate value in becoming educated.  Rising above your circumstances.  Not allowing others to deprive you of knowledge.   Looking to the future.  Here is her story.

"As an infant, Bharti Kumari was abandoned at a railway station in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states. Now, at the age of 12, she has become the head teacher at a school in Kusumbhara, her adopted village.

Every morning and evening, under the shade of a mango tree, she teaches Hindi, English and maths to 50 village children who would otherwise receive no education.

In between, she attends a state school in Akhodhi Gola, a two-mile walk away. Dressed proudly in her school uniform, she passes on the knowledge gleaned from her lessons to the village children, aged between four and 10, in her own class.

“I have a long day. My school is from 10am to 3pm and I study late,” she said. “This is what I love doing. I enjoy teaching children their ABCs as well as the Hindi alphabets.”

Kusumbhara is a poverty-stricken village 87 miles from Patna, the state capital. Most families are Dalits, India’s lowest social group, and they live in fear of Maoist insurgents waging a terror campaign against the security forces.

In the past four months 30 schools and community buildings have been blown up by the rebels. “How will we get educated if we’re scared?” asked Bharti, appealing to the government to build a proper school in the village.

Her pupils are among the 10 million Indian children who are outside the state education system because their parents are so poor that they need them to work or no schools are nearby. Earlier this month the Indian government pledged £3.6 billion for a “right to education” scheme which aims to provide free schooling for all.

Bharti’s adoptive father, Rampati, an impoverished farmhand, said he would not follow the rural tradition of pushing girls into early marriages but would allow her to continue her studies.

Her future career has already been decided. “I definitely want to become a teacher when I grow up,” she said." The Sunday Times

Twitter Updates – Follow Good News for Isla on Twitter.

RSS Subscription – Subscribe to Good News for Isla via RSS in a reader.

Email Updates – Sign up for email updates

Day 26: SEEDs of Change

The SEED Foundation is the dream of two men, Eric Adler and Rajiv Vinnakota.  Dramatically change the culture of the poor by education.  Not a new idea, for sure, but the means of accomplishing this dream is visionary.  Boarding schools.

""There's boarding schools for rich kids; why aren't there boarding schools for poor kids?" Vinnakota said. "The intense academic environment, the 24-hour aspect and constant access to role models. Why wouldn't all of those things be just as important for poor kids as it would be for rich kids?" 

"We believe very strongly that there is a group of kids for whom the answer is a 24-hour supportive educational environment. And they're not gonna have a shot if we don't give it to them," Adler added. 

It all starts on SEED's campus, a four-acre oasis, a safe zone where 340 kids can focus on school, free from distractions back at home.  SEED's goal is to prepare these children academically and socially for college and beyond. The students enter in sixth and seventh grade; 80 percent of them performing below grade level...That kind of dedication and personalized instruction has paid off: tenth graders at SEED score 40 percent higher in reading and 34 percent higher in math compared to other minority students in their area." 60 Minutes

The school is founded on the belief that each kid has high potential, and when placed in a supportive environment, they can succeed beyond what they can even imagine.  But not only that, they also work with them to develop life skills.  Teaching respect, study skills, values, social skills, and etiquette.  Suddenly these kids aren't just learning head knowledge, but instead how to be upstanding citizens, college-bound with the confidence to achieve great things.  

"In a single generation, families can not only produce a high school graduate, but a college graduate, and that changes a family forever. And that's why we do what we do."

Information for this blog post found at 60 Minutes and The SEED Foundation website.  

Twitter Updates – Follow Good News for Isla on Twitter.
RSS Subscription – Subscribe to Good News for Isla via RSS in a reader.

Email Updates – Sign up for email updates.