Amid Drugs and Despair, a Haven of Learning Perseveres in Tough East Harlem

Gene Kitt calls East Harlem “one of the toughest areas in the world. If crack isn’t in your house, it’s in the hallway or on the corner.”

Amid the drugs and despair, Kitt operates an oasis of learning and fun: the nonprofit Upward Fund, which runs a summer day camp and after-school programs for 1,200 youngsters ages 6 to 19.

Upward Fund teachers and volunteers, working out of an East Harlem elementary school, offer tutoring, job training, anti-drug courses, dancing, sports and even lessons in manners.

There “you play with a purpose--to learn,” Kitt said.

In the gym, kids playing basketball are asked what the ball is made of and how to spell the word. A geography lesson is sneaked in as the children name the home cities of professional teams.

Computer Practice

In a room lined with computer terminals, Danita Williams, 7, guides the image of Snoopy through a maze on her screen. “I like playing outside, gym and computers,” she said. Her neighbor, Tommy Rumardo, 7, agreed.

“They love this program and they don’t even know they’re learning!” Kitt said.

George Rivera, a single father who works for a medical research company, said his two boys are “always kept busy here in a positive way, with computers, arts and crafts, basketball. It doesn’t give them a chance to get into the wrong things--the people on the corner and the crack dealers.”

“Parents are struggling to save their children from the street, and we want to help,” Kitt said.

For adults, there are reading and English-as-a-second-language classes. Youngsters 13 and older can get vocational training, starting with attitude and how to dress for work.

Real-Life Plans

“They need to know you can’t just say, ‘Where’s the man with the job?’ ” Kitt said, “and they should have not one career as a dream but five, in case some don’t work out.”

Anthony Carreras, 14, enrolled in the Upward Fund at age 7. He said that the tutoring in math and reading “helped me a lot when I was younger.” Now, he proudly says, he works after school in the Upward Fund office.

Joe Charles, 25, said the Upward Fund “had a big impact on my life.” Kitt helped him get an internship at an insurance company when he was 19, and he now works for the company full time.

In summer camp, Kitt has each child take pictures with three different cameras--just to make sure that a budding Ansel Adams doesn’t go undiscovered.

Most Upward Fund children are from poor families. Parents pay only $3 a year for a child to attend the after-school program. Much of the organization’s $600,000 annual budget comes from corporate and foundation donations.

Kitt speaks proudly of starting an ice hockey program and beams as he tells how hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky and the L.A. Kings once came to Harlem to play with the Upward Fund team.

The program teaches mutual respect too.

“Today, if a kid steps on another kid’s toe, he’s liable to punch him in the face and go home and get three Uzis,” Kitt said, referring to the popular Israeli-made combat gun. “So we teach them manners.”