Program Seeks to Put Teens on Right Path

It took two burglary arrests to drive the point home for 17-year-old Robin.

“Now I see where I made the mistake,” says the assertive girl sitting in a circle with a dozen other teenagers sentenced to attend classes in a Palmdale classroom twice a week.

They are part of Project Teen Reach--a pilot program launched in September by the Los Angeles County Probation Department and the Panorama City-based Volunteer Center.

In its first year the program will target 400 youths in the Antelope Valley. The young offenders will spend time at Community High School on West Avenue M learning basic life skills that organizers hope will keep them out of future legal troubles, and also perform court-ordered community service.

The classes “make you think before you do something,” said 17-year-old Horacio, from Lancaster. “If you do something wrong you have to pay for the rest of your life.”

The Volunteer Center, a nonprofit organization operating in the Los Angeles-area since 1951, coordinates work by 40,000 to 50,000 volunteers, trying “to connect people and resources together to solve community problems,” said Cambria Smith, the center’s outreach coordinator.

Teen Reach grew out of Teen Outreach, a center program emphasizing community service for all teens--from cleaning a church yard to performing clerical work at police stations. The Volunteer Center works with about 4,000 teens in Los Angeles County and has an office in the Antelope Valley.

“It really helped me with getting my priorities straight,” said Noemi Medina, 20, who began doing volunteer work through Teen Outreach while a student at a continuation high school in Van Nuys. She wasn’t in legal trouble but she was using drugs, she said.

The Volunteer Center decided to work with the probation department to develop Project Teen Reach for the Antelope Valley, an area with a growing gang problem.

The aim of the program was to provide convicted teens a chance to give back to the community, a forum to discuss their personal problems and learn the skills that may lead them away from crime.

Groups of 12- to 17-year-olds spend nine weeks attending classes weekdays and performing community service on weekends.

The crimes of a recent group included auto theft and burglary. During classroom sessions they talk about their home lives, as well as their views on drugs, sex and peer pressures, said Susan Zaks, a Volunteer Center worker who conducts the classes.

“I don’t stand here and lecture,” Zaks said. “We discuss how to make good choices, why to make good choices.”

Some guest speakers, such as deputy district attorneys, open the teens’ eyes to the reality of the legal system.

The classes “give you something to turn to,” Robin said. “I think parents know about [teen pressures] but they forget what it’s like to be in our shoes.”

The program’s leaders estimate there are 350 gangs with 3,500 members in the Antelope Valley and the project could be a tool in leading the area’s youth away from gangs and crime.

“We need to take steps, those of us who work and live here, to get along in the melting pot,” said Michael Daniels, the probation officer working with the Volunteer Center on the project.