Oxnard Youth Corps Is Honored

The photos show the young volunteers of the Oxnard City Corps building a playground, cleaning the beach, passing out blankets to the homeless.

But more than that, the display mounted in Sacramento this week chronicles the gradual success of a program that was jump-started by the city’s youth after federal spending cuts eliminated their summer jobs.

The images will be viewed by officials at the annual convention of the League of California Cities, which is honoring the City Corps for its innovative approach to urban problems.

The Helen Putnam Award of Excellence was given at a luncheon Tuesday with a handful of volunteers and Oxnard officials on hand to accept it.

“I was happy to hear about it, “ said Het Lugo, 23, one of the original members of the corps and a current leader who went to receive the award. “We are finally seeing that not only people around here appreciate the type of program we have.”

The league gives awards every year to cities with innovative programs that address civic problems. This year, about 200 programs were nominated--with three winners chosen in each of 11 categories.

In the “Youth Development” category, the Oxnard City Corps and a Long Beach program won awards of excellence. A Pico Rivera program won the grand prize.

Oxnard officials said they take pride in their pioneering program.

It combines youth service with training in tasks ranging from operating heavy equipment to identifying chemicals that are dangerous to the environment. It involves hundreds of youths and adults from throughout the community.

“Every time we try something . . . and the kids are the center of it, it usually works because the issue with young people is motivation and participation,” said Efren Gorre, Oxnard’s youth training manager, who supervises the program. “If they are participating in cleaning the streets of the city, they are not going to litter.”

The corps began during a dark moment for youth programs in Oxnard.

Until 1995, Gorre directed a summer employment program for 120 youths--but the federal funding ran out. At the end of that summer, he called the participants into a room and told them the program would disappear.

The young people were disappointed. One, Gabriel Ipatzi, asked Gorre, “Why don’t we start our own program?”

Most of the young people said they would work without pay. But when school started, only six showed up.

By November, though, there were three dozen. With hoes and rakes in hand, they walked a circle with a 2-mile radius around City Hall cleaning alleys.

Some of the first participants recall being attracted to the corps by the good feeling generated from helping the community and belonging to a group.

“I liked it because it was fun,” said Rebecca Mejia, 21, an Oxnard College student and City Corps leader. “I got tutored with homework. It was like a second family.”

The program now has a budget of about $350,000 from city, state and private funds.

Gorre says 525 young people ages 14 to 23 have volunteered 400,000 hours of community service.

The corps’ offices are near City Hall. On a typical day, leaders such as Lugo, Mejia and 22-year-old Chuy Navarro take calls about prospective projects, research them and drive younger corps members to the office after school.

This year, the group expects to perform more than 1,000 projects. They range from simple tasks such as moving furniture for senior citizens to working under the supervision of city officials to help an apartment complex owner meet building code requirements.

“We worry [about] the way our city appears to people who come from out of town,” Lugo said. “And we know that a lot of people need help.”

A more recent focus of the group has been education, Gorre said.

To that end, the group made agreements with the Oxnard and Ventura school districts and the county superintendent of schools allowing corps members to receive academic credit for every 90 hours of service.

The corps also has an “online high school”--a computer center where lessons count toward a diploma from the Ventura Adult School.

But Gorre has even more ambitious plans.

They include getting Oxnard College and Cal State Channel Islands to give academic credit to corps members for their community work. And, Gorre hopes the corps can become a charter school itself.

His passion for the growing program showed in his nomination essay.

He wrote to the league of cities panel about the problem the city was trying to solve: maintaining youth programs in the face of federal funding cuts and a wave of youth violence.

He wrote about the projects, the police officers who mentor the corps youth, the residents who offer the youngsters sodas while they work and the children who now play in two playgrounds built by the group.

“There was no way for [the panel] not to feel this energy,” Gorre said.