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Valley students usher out spring break with Nampa service project
60 high schoolers spruce things up at the Original Gangster's Basic Academy of Delinquency
BY ANNA WEBB
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Shawn Raecke/ Idaho Statesman
Brianna Torrey, 15, of Kuna spent part of her spring break shoveling dirt into a wheel barrel on the campus of the Original Gangster Academy in Nampa on Saturday. The United Way project brought over 60 area teens from around the Treasure Valley like Torrey together to landscaped a walkway through campus, create a volleyball and basketball court, build benches, and hang shutters on the building. "My softball coach, Mike Rotchford, talked me into coming out and I'm glad I did, I get to meet new people and I like that," said Torrey. Bringing students together was part of the idea. "We wanted to create a spring break project that teens from around the Treasure Valley could do together and in our own backyard,Ó said Maddie Smith, Òa way of showing that we are all one in the Treasure Valley." Smith, 17, goes to Timberline high school in Boise and is one of four students on the steering committee for the alternative spring break project.
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Edition Date: 03/30/08
Fernando Flores, a Columbia High School 10th-grader, spent his time making a winding garden path and planting trees on the academy grounds.
The nonprofit academy, housed in a rangy brick building not far from the Northwest Nazarene University campus, includes not only a chapel but a boxing ring and a computer room.
It is a different kind of place than its name suggests.
For the last six years, the academy has been discouraging young people from joining gangs by providing tutoring, job training, recreational activities and a sense of community.
Around 25 boys and girls, ranging in age from their early teens to early twenties, are in the program.
Strickler, Yang and Flores were among 60 high school students from across the Valley who chose to spend the last weekend of their spring break at the academy as part of "Break Through with the Original Gangster's Academy," a project organized by United Way.
The project enlisted students to build benches, paint murals, build a volleyball court, hang window shutters and transform the academy grounds into a landscaped, community-friendly space.
The plan was ambitious, but by Saturday morning the students, energized perhaps by salsa dance lessons and a Mexican feast cooked by neighborhood volunteers the night before, had made a lot of progress. Local businesses, community agencies, even master gardeners, contributed their resources and time.
One unique aspect of the program, besides being the first of its kind organized by United Way, was that the students worked alongside young people who attend the academy.
Will Meyer, 20, has been coming to the academy for about two months, getting job training and working on his GED. He had been "getting into lots of trouble," he said, and came to the academy on the recommendation of a friend's mom. He liked it right away.
"It's positive here. There are gang members, but it's about respect. Everyone gets along."
The idea of meeting 60 young strangers was off-putting at first, he said. It was awkward until he started introducing himself. "They're people just like us, you know."
Many of the students participating in "Break Through" are from worlds very far from Canyon County, if not in a strictly geographical sense.
In 2002, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention identified the county as one of the top three communities (behind San Francisco and Anchorage) in dire need of gang intervention programs.
Yang is from China and wants to go to Harvard when she finishes high school. But this weekend she said she had such a good time learning new skills, including how to plant a tree, and meeting students from other schools, that she was already making her plans to return during next year's spring break.
Flores, doing his first stint as a community volunteer, grew up in Nampa.
"I think this project is great because it will boost the confidence level of the kids who come to the academy when they see that other young people from the community are interested in helping them."
United Way Volunteer Center Director Neva Geisler organized the project after hearing a lot about "alternative," social service-centric spring breaks in the news.
"Our whole effort at United Way is about 100 percent local change. We wanted to recruit local kids and send them out into the community." Geisler had toured the academy in the past and admired its programs, so it was a natural fit for "Break Through."
Students wore either a yellow or a blue bandanna all weekend to indicate which work team they were part of.
Stefanie Strickler considered her own yellow bandanna. It was impossible in such a setting to not think of one of bandannas' more infamous incarnations - gang signifiers.
"It's been a recurring theme of the weekend, Strickler said. "It's not that gangs or groups themselves are horrible. It's just that some gangs do horrible things. Everybody wants friends."
Anna Webb: 377-6431 |
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