A Search for Answers to S. Africa’s Urban Ills Leads to Streets of Watts : Producers of ‘The Big World’ focus on a popular after-school program as an example of hope.

The blond-haired camera crew members looked out of place as they walked the streets of Watts. When they got to Grape Street Elementary School, the youngsters demanded to know where they were from.

“You’re from South Africa? What are you all doing way up here?” asked one boy incredulously.

The television production crew and its 18-year-old star came to Watts last week looking for answers to South Africa’s urban problems, particularly those affecting Johannesburg, the country’s largest city. Halfway through its tour of 13 international cities, the crew of “The Big World” spent two days in Watts focusing on a free after-school program that tries to transform public elementary schools in 22 of Los Angeles’s poorest and most violence-prone neighborhoods into stimulating havens.

“I would say L.A. so far resembles Johannesburg most,” said director Johan Englebrecht, following an afternoon of filming at the school.

“If you remove all the palm trees,” Englebrecht said, waving across the Watts neighborhood, “this could be in Johannesburg. . . .You have very wealthy people in South Africa and you have very poor people in South Africa.”

The television series is part of South Africa’s year-old, majority-rule government’s plan to show more educational programs on the National Network TV channel to reach the massive numbers of uneducated people. “The Big World” begins airing in South Africa in January.

Not only is the show designed to be educational, it’s intended to let South Africans know their social struggles with poverty, unemployment and housing are not uncommon in other countries. Izaak Chokwe, the show’s black host, said many South Africans’ impression of life in the United States is one created by imported television images of success and riches for all.

“When I was back home I thought, ‘We down here in South Africa having it bad,’ ” said Chokwe. “I thought people out here had a way of getting over things and living comfortably. They talk about it in the music, you see it on TV. But when you get out here, it’s true that some people are comfortable, but there [are] still a lot of people that still have it bad, that are still living like us. So it’s the same.”

To tell the story of Watts, a low-income African American and Latino community where many families struggle daily with gangs, drugs and violence-prone streets, the crew followed Benny Ford, a 21-year-old playground worker at Grape Street school.

Ford, who works at the school on behalf of L.A.’s BEST After School Enrichment Program, attended Grape and still lives a few blocks away.

Sitting on the porch steps of the stucco house where he was raised, Ford explained to Chokwe--a graduate of the most prestigious multiracial high school in Johannesburg--about Watt’s housing projects, gang rituals and the difficulties facing children.

“They choose the wrong role model every day,” said Ford. “When [children] see a drug dealer or when they see somebody walking around with a [gang insignia] rag in their back pocket or with a gun in their hand and their pants sagging, you know what I mean? My role is to show these children that there is a better way.”

Ford, who struggles to pay rent and attends community college part time, is determined to help children stay straight.

“It’s not the violence, it’s the family,” said Ford. “Sometimes kids don’t have a family, and I know that is important. I see the kids walk by my house. I look at it like that was me before. So I just help them out.”

As Ford and Chokwe walk the few blocks to the school, it becomes obvious that the tall, neatly dressed Ford is well respected by both adults and children in his neighborhood. Two little boys trail him to the school. Neighbors stop to say hello.

It’s no different at the school, where from 2:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. children are supervised by a host of teachers and workers from L.A.’s BEST. The 7-year-old program, financed primarily by $2 million a year from the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, offers help with homework and recreational games and field trips. Ford, who assists in a classroom for kindergartners and first-graders, also leads an improvisational class for older children that explores gang and safety issues.

Chokwe and Englebrecht are impressed by the classrooms full of busy children. In Johannesburg, they said, there are few such programs for poor people--or the money to fund them.

“It seems in South Africa people feel it’s the next person’s responsibility to look after a certain part of a society,” said Englebrecht. “We have a lot of this at home, where young kids of working parents, from the time school closes to the time their parents get home, they don’t know what to do with themselves. And they become a problem.”

Ford talked about the liberating effect of his efforts.

“All the [housing] project kids go up to the school, and when they do, it’s like they feel free,” he said. “They go on trips. Things they never experienced, they can experience up there. And that’s kind of fun because I never got to experience it. You can see the joy in their eyes.”