Philosophy Cited in Cutoff of Anti-Gang Grant

Community Youth Gang Services’ $349,990 grant from the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles will not be renewed because of philosophical and tactical disagreements over the best way to use the money to divert youths from gangs into sports, according to the executive director of the anti-gang agency.

Steve Valdivia, commenting on the decision last week to not renew the grant, said that although his group was chiefly interested in using the sports program to familiarize youngsters from various neighborhoods with each other, the foundation that allocates surplus funds from the 1984 Olympics desired more structured training in sports fundamentals.

“We weren’t looking for miracles at all. We were just looking for ways to keep the kids busy, involve them in getting to know kids from other neighborhoods and gangs, but mainly keeping them occupied. They (the foundation officials) were more interested in fundamentals, the correct etiquette of sports, how to dribble a ball, how to hold a bat. They seemed to be trying to develop young Olympians,” he said, speaking more pointedly and in greater detail than he had earlier.

“We both made concessions,” Valdivia added. “But the difference of philosophy we had in the beginning, we ended up with at the end. We wanted to use sports as a vehicle for socialization. In another situation, we might use a dance or a picnic. I just felt that their emphasis on fundamentals, coaches’ clinics, clinics for the kids, was a little heavy.”

Seeks to Prevent Violence

The gang services group, which helped several hundred youths participate in sports through one of the Olympic foundation’s largest grants, seeks to prevent violence with the help of $2 million in public and private grants a year.

Some youngsters began dropping out of the program, Valdivia said, when a coach provided by the foundation started devoting a good share of time to showing on a blackboard how to do things athletically. And, he added, even some of the agency’s coaches did not like it.

Also, Valdivia said, he and other officials resisted suggestions from the foundation that an academic-style study be conducted to “see if sports could be a mode to change a person’s attitude.”

“I understand their philosophy,” he said. “We were an experiment. I would have preferred to allow a looser approach and maybe go to the coaching clinics and the fundamentals in the second year.”

Teaching fundamentals is a priority, however, for the the Amateur Athletic Foundation.

“We care about giving kids something they haven’t gotten before--the fundamentals--so they can develop their skills and take it from there. The friendships will come,” said Anita DeFrantz, the foundation’s president.

Steve Montiel, the foundation vice president who monitors the gang services agency grant, said teaching sports skills is “a centerpiece of our philosophy. For every sport, there’s a set of skills. In our programs, a kid has to have an opportunity to learn and practice these skills and then compete. Keeping the kids busy is important to me, too, but it’s not the central purpose.”

Training “young Olympians,” however, is not what the foundation is trying to do with such grants, Montiel said.

DeFrantz said the study Valdivia complained about was meant to measure how foundation-supported programs were working. “It’s a very simple process, and one that’s important to us,” she said. “We monitor all of our grants. We ask the kids themselves how they like what we’ve done. The right to do that is written into our contracts. The aim is to get the best possible product in everything we do.”

Valdivia said he and his colleagues were not particularly interested in instruction in any particular sports skills.

“I wanted to do whatever sports we could get them interested in--basketball, volleyball or anything,” he said. “I just wanted to get the kids in the socialization thing. And with our lack of volunteers, we couldn’t structure it any way as nicely as a Little League in the Valley.”

The foundation has made more than 150 grants to outside groups, valued at $11.6 million, since 1984, and has initiated several million dollars worth of its own programs. Many of the grants and programs are focused on economically deprived areas of East and South Los Angeles, where the gang services agency also concentrates its activities.