WILSHIRE : Center to Use Grant for Sports Equipment

A youth center has received a grant that will allow it to buy equipment for a new weight room and install lighting for its indoor basketball courts.

Heart of Los Angeles Youth, which was awarded $31,600, was one of 23 grass-roots organizations that received funds from the Amateur Athletic Foundation.

It was the second time the center at 3300 Wilshire Blvd. has received a grant from the foundation, which was founded after the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics to help youth athletic programs. The foundation last year awarded the center $59,000 to establish an after-school and weekend sports program, which now boasts more than 600 participants ranging in age from 6 to 19.

“We started out with basketball on Saturdays,” said Mitch Moore, executive director of Heart of Los Angeles. “They got us our seed money, enough for two salaries and equipment.”

The center operates sports programs seven days a week, including basketball, volleyball, soccer, indoor whiffle ball, weightlifting and rhythmic gymnastics.

Other activities include classes in painting and drawing, music, dance, theater and creative writing. Also, an academic program provides reading classes, tutoring and a job placement service for teen-agers.

The goal of the center, which Moore founded in 1989 and was incorporated as a nonprofit agency two years ago, is to keep kids from the city’s blighted neighborhoods off the streets and in a safe environment in their free time. Youths come--many by bus--from as far as Inglewood, South-Central Los Angeles and Echo Park. Moore hopes to acquire funds to purchase a van.

Heart of Los Angeles is an example of the type of grass-roots youth sports program that the Amateur Athletic Foundation supports, said Patrick Escobar, the foundation’s vice president of grants and programs. A total of $1 million was awarded this month, Escobar said.

Begun in 1985 with an endowment of $100 million in Olympics surplus funds, the foundation uses interest income to provide grants three times a year to organizations that use sports as a means of keeping young people off the street while teaching them discipline, teamwork and how to get along with peers.

Youth sports organizations are only required to write a letter stating their need in order to apply for a grant.

The foundation is at 2141 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles 90018-2040.

Information: (213) 730-9600.