A Close-Up Look At People Who Matter : Group Gives Girls Thirst for Ambition

In the rural community of Val Verde, dotted by homes with chickens in front yards and horse-keeping property, members of the Zonta Club of the Santa Clarita Valley discovered a deep kind of thirst.

“These kids are thirsty for knowledge,” said Lois Bauccio, who 1 1/2 years ago started the Healthy Kids Club as a joint project between the Zontas and the Samuel Dixon Family Health Care Center in Val Verde.

Members of the Healthy Kids Club, fifth- and sixth-grade Val Verde girls and their siblings, meet with Zonta members on Saturdays at Val Verde Park to learn about different careers available to women, as well as crafts and skills. The point of the club is to plant the seeds of inspiration in the girls before other influences--such as gangs--take root.

“We feel that’s the last chance. They’re not really grown up yet,” said Bauccio, director of development at Chaminade Preparatory School in Chatsworth.

The Santa Clarita Valley chapter of Zonta, an international organization of professional women that strives to improve the status of women, was started 20 years ago. But until recently, most of the club’s finances had been used by other groups for programs that carry out Zonta’s goals.

“We had been trying for a long time to find a project that we could call our own,” Bauccio said.

Their search led them to Val Verde--a rural community northwest of Santa Clarita.

“When we presented this program to the Zonta Club, we knew it was a perfect match,” said Peggy Freeman, executive director of the Samuel Dixon center, the only agency providing social services for this isolated community of 1,600.

Val Verde was founded in the 1930s as a resort for middle-class black families during a time of racial segregation. As racial barriers fell, Val Verde became a multiethnic community with a growing Latino population.

“The community of Val Verde is beautiful,” Freeman said. “The children here can play under trees, and take walks down paths, something that children in cities forget about.”

But the rural nature of the unincorporated town does not offer what a city might. Although it has a county park and a Boys & Girls Club branch, Val Verde has little else for youth.

“Being in a rural community, the kids can’t run down to the local mall, or the local fast-food restaurant,” Freeman said.

So, the Saturday meetings of the Healthy Kids Club--which last about an hour--have become one of the only outlets for girls whose lives revolve around school and taking care of their siblings. The sessions cover issues such as health, hygiene, understanding the changes in their bodies as they mature, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.

Although part of the message the Zontas offer is to have more ambition than just being a mother and raising a large family--as many of the girls’ mothers have--the Zontas also try to strike a respectful balance with family traditions, Bauccio said.

“We’d like for our girls to learn that they would like to be nurses or doctors or dental hygienists,” Bauccio said. “But we don’t wish to infer in any way that the path their mothers have taken is wrong. . . .

“We try to tell them the role of the professional is something that may be somehow better than what they have, but we don’t want to make them ashamed of their roots.”

So far, they have only seen small successes in their efforts. One girl may show an interest in computers; another may be inspired by the high school senior who works at the club and is trying to get into nursing.

“It’s just little baby steps,” Bauccio said. “This is not a great, grand scheme to change the world.”

One in an occasional column featuring the 1994 winners of the Los Angeles Times Community Partnership Awards appearing in Personal Best, a weekly profile of an ordinary person who does extraordinary things. Please address prospective candidates to Personal Best, Involved, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, 91311. Or fax them to (818) 772-3338.