Hearts of the City / Exploring attitudes and issues behind the news : Warm Home, Kool Aid : Makeshift youth centers offer an open fridge and an open heart.
W alk into Donna Hensen’s kitchen or Rena Dyson’s living room and you’ll likely encounter a few neighborhood children helping themselves to peanut butter and jelly, settling down to watch a movie or just pulling up a chair for a long chat.
Hensen and Dyson call their Pasadena houses “Kool Aid Homes”--makeshift community centers with open-fridge, open-heart policies that attract dozens of kids.
Dyson, a single mother of two, teaches parenting classes and works as a counselor for Day One, a community group that focuses on drug and alcohol abuse. Hensen and her husband are raising five children in their Pasadena bungalow . Known on the street as “Momma D,” Hensen organizes community events for kids in Pasadena and Altadena .
In a conversation surging with energy and enlivened by shouts and laughter, Dyson, 39, and Hensen, 32, recently discussed parenting and community activism:
Dyson: I was raised in a Kool Aid House. No matter who you were, if you needed it, you had a place to sleep. If you needed food, if you needed transportation--it was there. But you respected the house. You respected your elders. If you were falling down drunk, you got sober before you knocked on the door. If you were a gangbanger, you’d pull up the pants at the door.
Hensen: We were raised by grandparents. And those grandparents instilled a unique something in us that inspired us to inspire other young people. It’s a matter of talking with them: “What are you in need of? What keeps you from excelling?” It’s not us saying, “Now let me tell you . . . “
Dyson: Probably the most controversial thing that happens in my house is that I have condoms out for anyone to take. I don’t care if it’s my son, my nephew or my brother-in-law--though I hope it’s not my brother-in-law--they’re for whoever needs them.
Hensen: At 16, I was pregnant . . . At that time, I made a commitment to myself that my children, as well as any other child who wanted to know anything about sex [could ask me]. They need to know.
While Dyson and Hensen aim to make kids feel comfortable at their homes, they do not allow visitors to take liberties. For example, Dyson returned home one day to find her back door ajar and soup containers scattered in her kitchen. Four neighborhood boys had swarmed into the empty house to snack and watch TV. That evening, Dyson asked the boys’ parents to discipline their children and emphasize the dangers--and the rudeness--of breaking in , even when the target is a self-proclaimed Kool Aid House.
Dyson: Part of having a Kool Aid House is, you have to be responsible and if you see anything going on in the house, you have to take it back to the [offenders’] parents.
That’s one of the biggest fears people have about [starting] a house--if you hear something, you gotta tell someone about it, and who are you going to tell? The police? The parents? What if you don’t know the parents? Or what if some kid comes in and says, “At home, I’m touched inappropriately by my brother?” So there are drawbacks.
Hensen: [But] it’s not expensive. When . . . a kid comes over hungry, we’ll find him something.
A lot of times, we don’t know why he’s hungry. I don’t get into what’s going on in his home until he’s ready to share that with me. If you’re not constantly prying into their lives, you find that you develop a buddy system, a one-on-one relationship. They begin to break down and tell you what’s going on. . . .
It’s not so much that adult boys are looking for a male role model. They’re looking for a mother. Somebody that they can feel comfortable and confident with, that they can talk to.
Dyson: I think they’re looking for a caretaker, someone who can nurture them. If it comes from a man, fine. But for the most part, it’s going to come from a woman.
For all the energy they pour into their Kool-Aid Houses, the women know they cannot save an entire generation from gangs and drugs and guns. Instead, they aim to spread one simple message: Children deserve respect.
Dyson: Before you jump to an assumption [about what a group of kids might be up to], investigate. Go outside. See what’s on their mind. Smile when they look your way. A smile sometimes melts things. And when the kids come by, speak.
Hensen: You’re going to lose some kids. I have lost one girl [who joined a local gang].
Dyson: You didn’t lose her, she just detoured. She’s learning something new and when she gets tired, she’ll be back.
Hensen: I figure, eventually she’s going to get tired.
Dyson: No matter what you do, you’re fighting against hormones, you’re fighting against peer pressure, you’re fighting against society . . . The only thing is, [we’ve] given them a way out.
Many kids don’t have a way out. They don’t know that any time they’re tired of gangbanging, there’s another way. Any time they’re tired of abusing themselves, there’s another way. That [knowledge] is all we’re giving them.
That’s what was given to me.
I could be on drugs, with a batterer, with a houseful of kids on welfare. Easily. But because my mother had help from her mother, her mother’s mother, my father’s mother, my aunties, Joe Blow down the street who would call my mother and say, “She’s cussing,” the church who would pick me up on Sunday and say, “If you don’t have transportation, we’ll be there for you,” the teacher who said, “You know you act tough, but you’re not tough and I’m going to teach you what you need to know because you’re going to be someone someday” . . . That’s why I am who I am.
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The Beat Today’s centerpiece forcuses on two women who open their houses to young people seeking refuge from the streets or troubled homes. Many organizations help youths steer clear of gangsand drugs. To volunteer contact: Interagency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect: (818) 575-4362 People Who Care Center: (213) 778-8905 Volunteer Center for San Fernanado Valley: (818) 908-
