IT'S A GIRLS' THING

I walked in with a slight sense of surprise; I have been to many community-based organizations and they often have a drab air that you encounter when walking into their facilities. However, this generalization could not be further from the truth when used to describe the Lower Eastside Girls Club! It was vibrant, colorful and active with a feeling of dynamic change and optimism. As I sat down on the comfortable black couch the space reminded me of a hip art gallery that you might frequent on a Friday night. The space, however, was a little too small to house the ambitious and positive mission that the Lower Eastside Girls Club has been delivering and is continuing to deliver. Fortunately, this will change in 2007 when the construction of a 47,000 square foot facility is underway.

I was welcomed with warmth by the effervescent and talented Renee Laster (who inspired the title) during the visit. "If this wasn’t here I would probably still be fighting to get out of high school and be at the house doing nothing, seriously doing nothing," 21-year-old Renee said about the Lower Eastside Girls Club.

The young women who participate in the Lower Eastside Girls Club programs reflect the northeast corner of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Most live at or below the poverty line, and all of the girls lack the advantages that children of middle to upper-class families enjoy: the conventional opportunities to social and economic success, a significant and recurrent voice in the community, an ability to navigate the educational system, and parents with the time and the capacity to actively support their livelihood.

The neighborhood the LEGC serves is a 50-block area that houses 27 NYC public housing complexes. More than half of the area residents (55.9%) have incomes that fall below the poverty level. The barriers that seriously inhibit community residents from achieving social and economic success include high rates of poverty, crime, school drop-out, unemployment, a shortage of affordable housing and population density, all aggravated by limited access to nutritious and healthy food.

LGEC is a private grassroots organization founded in 1996 by neighborhood mothers, workers, artists, and community activists dedicated to ensuring that youth in the community to learn to think critically and act positively, learn to care for themselves and others, and grow into productive and happy adults. In less than a decade, the LEGC has grown from a small, volunteer-led organization into a recognized leader and innovator in the field of youth and community development.

Lyn Pentecost, who was one of it’s concerned neighborhood mothers who helped found the LEGC and is currently the executive director, said, "its unique in the sense that it is open to any girl who wants it. It’s different because it’s not just a one issue organization. One of the programs that we take seriously is You Are What You Eat; Feeding Brains and the Soul. Also the entrepreneurial aspect of some of the programs invites girls to be financially responsible with a product that happens to be nutritious."

For the past three years (2002-2005), they have run a neighborhood Farmers’ Market. Farmers from the North East, assisted by teenage girls trained and managed by the Girls Club, sold their produce to the largely black and Latino residents from the nearby housing projects. The girls even developed and operated an education kiosk in a local farmer’s market every week.

The Girls Club has created an in-school entrepreneurial/health and wellness curriculum that results in teen-run, after school juice/smoothie and healthy muffin cafes. The Sweet Thing Bake Shop, an entrepreneurial training program and earned income initiative, has had great success. According to Renee, "the Bake Shop, is a lot of hard work but we run our own business. I learn a lot about myself like the fact I have a lot of patience; it makes me more unselfish." The LEGC has established "Juice Joints" that serves healthy snacks and beverages at two schools and are staffed by participants in the training course so that they may practice and develop business skills. They have also launched a program for Girls Club members to introduce WIC mothers from a nearby health center to locally produced agricultural products.

In October, the Girls Club launched its latest venture: The Intersn@ck Café, an after school healthy snack program in the form of a smoothie and Muffin Bar adjacent to their internet drop-in center. Each day more than 75 teen and pre-teen girls arrive at The Girls Club Center for classes. Famished after a long day, the girls walk in embracing junk food snacks from the nearest ‘bodega’ ranging from "Dipsy Doodles" to champagne soda.

The Intersn@ck Café is a project designed to address several goals to counteract the multiple issues concerning the community. The project introduces healthy snack habits to a mostly inaccessible adolescent and young adult population, thereby reducing health risks. By educating an urban community about the environmental component that explains food production, nutrition, and physical health, the program addresses the poor nutritional health of low-income adolescents and their families. It will provide job training and opportunities to an under-employed population of teens and young adults and enable them to enter the nutrition and health based professions.

When Lyn Pentecost brilliantly said, "We offer social change instead of social services," the statement solidified the reason why LEGC won the Harry Chapin Self Reliance Award (HCSRA). The HCSRA is awarded as a cash grant to outstanding grassroots organizations in the U.S. that have moved beyond charity to creating change in their communities. Winners are judged outstanding for their innovative and creative approaches to fighting domestic hunger and poverty by empowering people and building self-reliance. The grant will be used for the Intersn@ck café, which is an excellent model of such a self-reliant approach. The program exemplifies social change and self-reliance, two vital components to make our world a better place.