Putting Sparkle Into a Community

Sometimes all it takes is a couple of people to make a difference in a community. About seven years ago in El Sereno, two women, Mary Jaquez and Rosemarie Elizondo, looked around their neighborhood and decided it could use some sprucing up. So they formed El Sereno Sparkle Club and invited the neighborhood kids to join with them in a once-a-month cleanup detail. RITA LUTHER spoke with Mary Jaquez about the Sparkle Club.

Atypical cleanup involves walking to a specific area that had been identified as needing some care and spending about three hours cleaning. Then we take the kids to lunch at a local restaurant. We use the time with the kids to talk about taking responsibility for their community and improving their neighborhood by working with city agencies, such as the police and the sanitation and street maintenance departments.

Our intention is to empower the kids so that they know how to get things done through the city and how to develop a positive relationship with authority figures.

We also have been able to identify kids at risk by talking to them about their circumstances and helping their parents get services that they might not know are available to them.

Just recently we noticed a seventh-grade boy who was dirty and who appeared to not be getting adequate care. It turned out his family lived in a garage; they had very little food and didn’t know how to get help. We helped get food and clothes donated to the family and met with them about what they could do to improve their situation. As it happened, the kids were placed in foster homes until the parents get back on their feet.

We hope we are creating a sense of community among the kids so that they don’t feel so isolated. Some of them are just lonely and want attention from an adult they can trust. We feel getting them involved in volunteer work teaches responsibility and makes them feel that they can make a difference in their own community.

The El Sereno Sparkle Club raises money by holding car washes, selling candy or asking and receiving donations from local merchants. Our initial equipment (wide shovels, hard rakes, leaf rakes and trimmers) was donated by the city. We were given permission by El Sereno Middle School to store our equipment in a shed on its property, which worked out well except that it has been broken into three times.

We find that the kids who participate regularly with us get into less trouble at school, and some go on to other volunteer programs as they progress into high school. In fact one of our students, David, who was with us in the beginning, is now attending college and has started his own version of the Sparkle Club with college students. He comes back a few times a year to help mentor the younger kids.

We don’t have transportation, so we walk everywhere. As a result, our area of impact is limited, but it’s where these kids live and that is what is important.

The reward for us is the thanks from the community, the hugs from the kids and the handwritten thank-you cards scribbled in crayon. Plaques and certificates only gather dust. We do it for the kids and the reward of knowing that the little contact we have with them helps teach them to be responsible community citizens.

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For additional information: Mary Jaquez, president, El Sereno Sparkle Club: (323) 222-2948.