Driving Force Behind Youth Foundation : Alphonse Works Hard to Keep Activity Center From Running on Empty

Flash back to a year ago: Chilton Alphonse sat long hours in his office with a phone glued to one ear, trying to drum up last-minute ticket sales to politicians, friends and everyone else he knew for a fund-raising banquet.

His Community Youth Sports and Arts Foundation in the Crenshaw District was in dire financial straits, a too-common situation for the center since it opened 10 years ago.

A year later, though Alphonse is not out of the woods, he admits that he can see plenty of daylight. A small but steady influx of donations, chief among them a $45,000 boost from Shell Oil, has allowed the nationally recognized foundation to not only pay its bills, but make plans to purchase the building at 4828 Crenshaw Blvd. About $20,000 of the donation will go toward the $275,000 purchase, which requires a down payment of $40,000.

“Things are looking pretty good now, for the first time in a long time,” said Alphonse, who is seated in his upstairs office at the center. “I can see the shape of things a lot more clearly.”

Alphonse attributes the upswing to the steady support of Shell Oil, the foundation’s largest corporate supporter. Since launching a pilot community relations program, Shell has contributed more than $100,000 to the foundation’s most critical service for young people: a continuation school that allows them to complete their high-school education.

The foundation also offers parenting classes, field trips, sports such as weight training and other programs to its young clientele, many of whom are struggling to leave gangs.

The Los Angeles Unified School District provides instructors and training to the school, officially called an alternative education work site. Since Shell began its partnership with Alphonse four years ago it has paid the operating expenses, which includes rent, utilities, Scholastic Aptitude Test preparation and other instruction.

“This foundation is the perfect match for what we wanted to do, which is focus on education and youth,” said Bob Russ, Shell’s community relations manager in Los Angeles. “We may not be giving huge amounts of money, but we are making a difference.”

With about $100,000 in city and county grants--and later $70,000 that he won in a state lottery--Alphonse launched the Community Youth Sports and Arts Foundation to make good on a dream of helping neighborhood youth. Though the center has frequently been lauded as a model grass-roots effort, it has also suffered from chronic funding shortages and has been on the verge of closing several times.

But after Shell’s contribution, coupled with $75,000 in recent city and county grants, Alphonse said he can realistically talk about buying gym equipment and repairing structural damage the building sustained when a motorist plowed into it last October.

Though the fiscal battle may be temporarily won, battles of a different kind may be in store.

The center’s school, along with 10 other alternative education sites sponsored by the school district, are in danger of being eliminated in the latest round of proposed state budget cuts.

Alphonse hopes to enlist school Supt. Sid Thompson’s support in lobbying the state to preserve the campuses, which cater to students unable to adapt to traditional schools. The foundation site, which serves about 80 students, ranked near the top last year among continuation schools in daily attendance and percentage of students who attend college.

“I saw the kinds of kids Chilton was taking, the kind kicked out of high school and nobody would take,” said Russ. “I knew it was here that we could really make a difference.”