190 Children at Housing Project Join Hands, Heads, Hearts, Health

In summers past, television and trouble filled most evenings for children at the San Fernando Gardens housing project in Pacoima.

So when VISTA volunteer Rosa Roman started making phone calls and knocking on doors, gauging parents’ interest in a pilot 4-H club within the housing project, the response overwhelmed her. More than 190 children signed up for 4-H, and 35 were enrolled in the club’s first project, arts and crafts, when the first meetings were held in temporary Quonset hut quarters last week.

The newest 4-H club in the San Fernando Valley, which its leaders said provides one of the only diversions for the project’s youths, represents a shift in direction for the organization in Los Angeles County.

It has neither freckle-faced farm children nor award-winning heifers, but its members seem as excited as any 9-year-old planting his first beans in anticipation of the county fair.

At a meeting last Thursday, Sandy Sanchez, 12, already had something to be proud of: a neatly stitched flower petal taking shape on an embroidery hoop.

She also had been elected by the children gathered in the housing project’s stuffy Head Start building to lead the arts and crafts group, which will meet daily from 5 to 7 p.m.

“The teacher said we need a leader that wants to be a leader,” she said proudly. “I got to be it.”

Sandy said she already likes 4-H, especially since it meets in the late afternoon. During the day, she said, she cares for her 2-month-old brother, and “I usually don’t come outside.”

Deirdre Thompson, the county cooperative extension 4-H agent who oversees the new club, admitted that there have been failures at some other housing projects because parent volunteers sometimes cannot be recruited, or grants to pay for supplies and leaders’ stipends were lost.

But she said she is optimistic about the club in the San Fernando Gardens, because youth activities there are scarce and parents fear letting their children venture into the dangerous neighborhoods nearby for outside recreation programs.

“We already have four adult volunteers and we’ve got a captive audience, so to speak,” Thompson said.

The arts and crafts project, the first undertaken by the new club, is only the beginning, said VISTA volunteer Roman, who lives in the housing project. Projects soon will be established in camping, foods and nutrition, computers and football, she said.

“The people here, they are real happy,” Roman said. “They want the kids to learn something.”