Bresee Is Expanding Its Outreach

For the past 13 years, Jeff Carr, a minister at the First Church of the Nazarene in Westlake, has worked for the church’s Bresee Foundation to bring health services and educational, employment and recreational programs to families living in the neighborhoods of Koreatown, Pico-Union, Westlake and South-Central Los Angeles.

The third floor of the 105-year-old brick church was temporarily converted into a community center in 1990, with various rooms used for homework and tutoring programs, computer training, banking, recreational activities, a snack bar and basketball court.

With $2.8 million in funding secured from the S. Mark Taper Foundation, private grants, individuals and Propositions A and K, the Bresee Foundation purchased a former Los Angeles Unified School District instructional services building across the street in 1998. The community center will be relocated to this much larger facility in January.

MARCELA ROJAS spoke with Carr, 36, about the center’s new home.

While we have comprehensive programs for our youth and their families already in place, we will be dramatically expanding them because we will be tripling the amount of space we have. In the new building, we will have a youth center, learning center, computer training room, video and editing bays, a deejay booth, cyber cafe and a medical clinic with four examining rooms and a restroom with showers that homeless people can use.

Right now, our community center is about 3,200 square feet. The new facility is about 15,000 square feet. We service about 3,000 people annually. We expect to double that amount in the next three to five years. There will be an annual $5 membership fee that will give people access to everything including their own e-mail and the Internet.

Right now, we offer about 15 hours a week of access to our technology services. When we move across the street, we will have about 24 computers and we will operate for 66 hours a week. That’s quadruple the amount of time people can learn how to use the computer, look things up on the Internet, whatever they need. The cyber cafe will also have 14 computers with high-speed Internet access, scanners, printers. It can be used like a Kinko’s.

Another way this will better serve the community is that it will be more accessible to all kinds of people. Since our services are located inside the church now, people may not know we exist or may not want to go in because of its location. The size and location of our new facilities will attract more people.

Phase two of our plans is to vacate the street that the building is located on, put in a cul de sac at the end of the street and convert it into a park. That will cost about $300,000 and is already in the works. We hope to have the street vacated by December.

What’s unique about us is that 80% of our staff live in the neighborhood, so we have a self-interest here. We’re really about trying to enhance the quality of life in this neighborhood. We don’t want to see kids getting gunned down. The more we can do to provide the youth with programs and a safe place where they can come and hang out, the better our community will be and the future of these kids.

For more information, contact Jeff Carr at (213) 387-2822.