Problems? Sure, but This Program Teaches People to Solve Them : Urban living: A national organization prepares to launch the second phase of training for Wilmington leaders to work together for community improvement.

So many problems, so much potential to solve them. That is why Wilmington fascinated administrators of Coro--a national, nonprofit organization formed 50 years ago to train future community leaders.

This year, Coro launched a program aimed at training entire neighborhood groups to help solve their communities’ problems. After last spring’s riots, the organization started the program in three Southern California communities--one of which is Wilmington.

Wilmington’s strong community spirit made the area a natural choice, Coro officials say. And so did the longstanding rift between the east and west sides of town. For an outsider, it is not easy to understand. But Avalon Boulevard--the east-west dividing line in Wilmington--is a Mason-Dixon line of sorts, demarcating alien and sometimes hostile territories.

“What attracted us was the clear division of east and west,” said Ken Chawkins, Coro director of development. “As a consequence of this division, you have this dynamic community, but not a lot of people in the community are aware of what the east side and west side are doing,” he said.

The attraction was mutual, partly due to a perception on the part of many in Wilmington that Coro can help them change their lives as well as their community.

Wilmington, Watts and Long Beach were chosen from about 18 applicants to Coro’s Southern California office for the new two-tiered training program. The first phase, which ran from June to November, was the formation of a neighborhood leadership council.

The second phase, beginning next month in Wilmington and already completed in Watts and Long Beach, will be a neighborhood fellows program. About 10 fellows will meet two to three times weekly over a five-month period, attending seminars and workshops on community organizing. They will also be assigned internships in business, labor, the media or community service organizations.

While the new program targets individual communities, Coro hopes to train future fellows to focus on the larger metropolitan area of Los Angeles.

In some Wilmington circles, spots in the Coro program are a constant topic of conversation. Political organizers, business people, religious leaders and ex-gang members have submitted the applications, essays and recommendations needed to be considered as fellows for the second phase of the program. Coro is in the process of notifying fellowship candidates whether they have been selected.

“What we want to do is to match their spirit with knowledge. We don’t have an agenda in Wilmington and we don’t want to leave a presence in Wilmington,” Chawkins said. “We want to create a band of people that could look at a problem and say, ‘How do we take care of this ourselves.’ ”

The first phase of the program, in which 11 people who live or work in Wilmington formed a neighborhood council, was completed in November. As a group project, the council chose to try to expand interest in the existing neighborhood watch program. Using speakers and flyers in English and Spanish, the council helped increase participation in the program dramatically.

Dan Hoffman, who moderates the weekly Wilmington Information Network (WIN) meetings and is circulation manager for the San Pedro News-Pilot, just finished the council program.

“Coro’s appeal is that a lot of people in the community want to help, but what some of them need and what they want are a few more skills to be able to get things done in the community,” Hoffman said.

“But things are absolutely improving in Wilmington,” Hoffman said. “People who not that long ago weren’t involved in cleaning up the community are out picking up trash and painting out graffiti; people who a few months ago were concerned about the drug dealers in their alley . . . (have) gone out with their neighbors and their friends and told those folks they don’t want them there anymore. The truce between the gangs is working. It’s thin, it’s fragile, but the will is there.”

The neighborhood council program began with what Coro calls a Logic Study, in which council members are given a week to study a community other than their own.

The council met at locations including Holy Family Church, Dana Strand Housing Project, the Harbor Division police station, ILWU Local 63 and the office of City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, forcing council members to familiarize themselves with varying parts of the community.

Susan Pritchard, Flores’ Wilmington aide, will be in the upcoming fellows program.

“What I want is to be more like Dan Hoffman,” she said, explaining why she applied for the program. “I’ve been doing things in the community for years, but I don’t have any formalized training and I need to better my communication skills.

“Dan doesn’t offend people, and I have a tendency to do that--unintentionally. At the last WIN meeting, I said something to someone and Dan said the same thing, but that person felt that I’d slam-dunked them and that Dan had not.”

Gerlinda Vaca, a Los Angeles County probation officer, also will be in the fellows program. She, too, is looking for skills to improve the community.

A probation officer for 3 1/2 years in Wilmington, Vaca spends her days going into homes and schools, trying to keep youths out of trouble.

“Wilmington is riddled with gangs, graffiti, crime, drugs, declining neighborhoods,” Vaca said. “But at the same time, when I go to these WIN meetings I see a lot of interested community people. If they just stick together they can win, family by family, individual to individual,” she said.

A sense of individual responsibility is what pulled Lew Prulitsky from his Rancho Palos Verdes home into Wilmington activism.

Prulitsky, who leads the Wilmington Revitalization Committee and the graffiti paint-out efforts and chairs the Harbor Area Apartment Assn., is the only Coro neighborhood council member who will be in the fellows program.

“Three or four years ago I became concerned and disgusted with the way things were happening in Wilmington,” he said. “First I went to WIN meetings and raised hell with the police. Then I kind of realized it wasn’t the policemen’s fault. So I went to the City Council and the mayor’s office, blaming them for not giving police support to do the job. Finally, I was so frustrated and fed up I started getting involved in the community, and I found I really enjoyed it.

“But the main reason for it was I thought maybe Coro could be a vehicle to give us some more information and knowledge and whatever we might need to try to get us going in the right direction.”

Coro officials think Wilmington already is headed in the right direction. A few new tools to help residents learn to communicate better with each other, and a world of potential opens, they say.

“Take the world’s largest burrito,” said Chawkins, referring to the cooking last spring in Wilmington of a colossal burrito stretching 2,219 feet. The effort made the Guinness Book of World Records. But more important, the community had to unite behind the effort to make it work.

“That burrito was just a wonderful activity--a fantastic example of how the entire community--business and community organizations, churches, schools, east side and west side, everybody--came together to work as a whole,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to accomplish.”