PANORAMA CITY : Program Aims to Keep Youths Off the Street

Tucked away in a converted apartment is the other side of Blythe Street, where young residents are working to tear down the neighborhood’s crime-ridden image and create their own futures.

The teen-agers--as many as 50 from the Blythe Street neighborhood--have been meeting for the last two months, planning trips and events, organizing car washes and playing softball.

“The people come and look at the negative points of Blythe Street, not the positives,” said Danny Aristega, one of the group’s leaders.

The group, which meets Wednesday afternoons, is part of a joint program operated by Friday Night Live, run by the Los Angeles County Office of Education, and the San Fernando Valley Partnership.

“We’re walking these kids through a rough part of their lives,” said Albert Melena, neighborhood specialist for the partnership, who started helping the kids as a volunteer coach for football and basketball games.

The partnership has acquired $10,000 in federal grants to help pay for the group’s activities, which also may include neighborhood beautification projects.

The teen-agers meet with Melena and Abel Sedillo Jr. of Friday Night Live in one of three apartments converted in December into the local offices for a Blythe Street project run by the Immaculate Heart of Mary order of nuns.

The project brings a wide range of social service agencies into the neighborhood.

“These are top-notch kids,” said Sister Anne Regan, director for the IHM Blythe Street project. “I’ve worked in many areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties. These are basically good kids. They want to go to college, and they are all dying to work this summer. They know the gang kids, but they leave them in peace.”

One of the biggest problems for the neighborhood is that there simply has not been enough to do, Sedillo said.

Friday Night Live and the San Fernando Valley Partnership work to stop alcohol and drug abuse. “But instead of just preaching don’t do this and that, we give them what they can do,” Sedillo said.

So far, one or two kids who have been involved in the program have gone back to hanging out with their gang friends again, Melena said. But they still have an open invitation to come back, he said.

“The kids are changing a lot,” said Maria Soriano, the mother of two of the teen-agers in the program. “I’m sure everything can be better.”