This is part of a multi-part story. To view past installments, please visit Learn-Engage-Empower at im4u.world.
My team moved quickly in the days that followed. We set up several meetings at the #neighborhood recreation center in the upcoming months. The data showed the #neighborhood had serious social problems. We discovered that the #neighborhood had the highest concentration of sexual predators living in an area with an extremely high percentage of children (40%). Coupled with drug addiction, #poverty and gun #violence, the #neighborhood was a ticking time bomb.
We decided to break the #neighborhood into 3 groups of people based on age, children, teens, adults. We contacted the local university and enlisted the help of the social work, art, anthropology, and planning departments. We talked with the #police and got them interested in our efforts.
Well, ‘efforts’, I use that word lightly. We were not sure what we were doing. Honestly, we were feeling our way through this one. It was certainly a discovery process of a large scale. We enlisted Joseph to help us get the people we needed to the meeting. We scheduled the #children and teens on different days than the adults. We wanted unadulterated feedback from the #children and #teens.
The university supplied social work students who designed a coloring exercise for the kids to better understand the experience of their lives and approaches to work with the teenagers too. The anthropology and planning departments suggested things to look for and approaches to take as we reached out to discover more about this #neighborhood and the people who lived here. The police attested to the social problems the data revealed. Many police officers participated in the Police Athletic League (PAL) and some helped with book drives for the #kids.
The day fast approached for our first meeting with the #children and #teens. We spoke with the recreation center staff. They recounted to us stories of #hunger and the plight of the #children coming to the rec center to play and to get something to eat.
I polled my team. Forget bringing beverages and cookies to the meeting. Let us get something more substantial. Everyone on the team contributed money and we brought sandwiches, milk, whole grain chips, fruit, and veggies. The ladies working at the rec center were on the verge of tears when they saw the food we brought.
We had the #children eat first before we began. Many ate hungrily. Bellies full, they were ready to have some fun. Our newfound friends from the #school of social work led the #children and teens (2 separate groups meeting at different ends of the hall) in fun exercises. The #children colored pictures of their #neighborhoods, what they saw, where they went, who they met.
The meeting passed all too fast, and we released the kids and teens to play outside and have some more fun. One of the social work students came up to me with a very disturbed look on her face. She showed me one of the #children’s pictures of their #neighborhood. Among the houses, the school and the rec center, the illustrations of friends, there were two stick figures. One had a #gun pointed at the other. She showed me several other pictures where the kids had drawn a mysterious blue house that was dangerous and with warning to stay away, as they told the student supervising the exercise. I recalled the data about the high concentration of sexual predators living in the #neighborhood and I felt a growing alarm.
The teen exercise was more discussion based. Equally disturbing were the casual recounting of ‘regular’ events: the #drug dealers at the bus stops waiting for the #school bus to drop off #children and #teens alike; recurring domestic #violence in the household; wayward parents; latch key kids; #drug addicted parents; #school absenteeism and #school dropouts.
I felt like I had been punched in the gut. These #kids did not have a chance. They had no advocate, no role model, no help. This backwater #neighborhood in the middle of a large city isolated by a freeway on the east and large arterial roads bordering its other sides was quietly dying. I now understood the gravity of Joseph’s tears when he first sat across my desk in my downtown high-rise office. This #neighborhood was quietly dying, and no one in the outside world knew or cared. Until now.
Next week - Part 4 - Into Action.
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