After-School Program Gives Kids Firm Footing

Amid the drugs, gangs and violence commonly associated with Blythe Street, Nora Longoria found a safe haven in an after-school program that offers tutoring, field trips and emotional support.

Longoria, 18, who will attend UC Berkeley in the fall, also credits her mother with helping her avoid the negative influences in her neighborhood and instilling in her the importance of a good education.

She joined 73 other area kids Saturday who have just graduated from local grammar, middle and high schools at the Blythe Street Prevention Project’s third annual celebration.

After each graduate received a notebook binder at the conclusion of the ceremony, a mariachi band serenaded the more than 200 students and parents.

“She’s real proud of me because I’m the first generation in my family to go to college,” said Longoria as her mother, Cira, wept tears of joy.

Sponsored by the San Fernando Valley Partnership, the project includes a 10-week prevention curriculum that provides Blythe Street kids with after-school tutoring, recreational activities such as football and softball, field trips to local colleges, Magic Mountain and museums, and parental and resident training.

Operating for five years from two converted apartments with the help of a $1-million federal grant from the Washington-based Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, the program has been a safe haven along a block of poverty and violence.

Albert Melena, the program’s youth director who grew up in Van Nuys in a similarly crime-ridden area, said he travels from Lancaster to the youth center daily because he understands the pressures of living in such a depressed area.

“Sometimes I spend more time here with these kids than my own,” said Melena, a 29-year-old father of three. “This is a 24-7 job. One thing I’ve learned is that community work is not your time, you have to be on the community’s time.”

And many of the program’s kids are grateful for his dedication.

Hugo Garcia-Gomez, 18, said that when he was in the seventh grade, Melena approached him to play in the program’s newly formed flag football league.

Back then, he said, “I would see the gangstas on the block and I be like, ‘Damn, that’s cool. I want to be like them.’ I thought I was never going to graduate. I thought I’d never have the chance until the program came along.”

Now Garcia-Gomez has plans to attend the College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita or Mission College in Sylmar.

The tutoring at the center helped Kristyn Falero, 18, graduate with honors from Monroe High School in North Hills this year.

“I’ll probably study sociology at Mission College because I want to be a social worker,” she said. “I’m definitely coming back to help out.”

Her mother, Valarie, 40, said the center has helped the entire family stay on the right track.

“I’ve seen so many kids, so much violence on the street,” the single mother of three said. “It’s the only influence some of these kids have. But when the kids stop in, the program pulls them back.”

But the center is more than a place where young people can get help with their homework. It is a close-knit family environment.

Esmeralda Virgen said that when her father died last August, the center’s 18 staff members gave her the emotional support she needed.

“I never really had support from parents because they were always at work and didn’t have much time to spend to get to know who I really was,” said the 18-year-old recent graduate of Monroe High School. “But if the program wasn’t there it would have been hard.”