Tackling Poverty After School

In the Lehigh Valley, as in the nation as a whole, inner-city youth are faced with the challenges of overcrowded schools, crime-ridden streets and limited resources for personal development.

On the national scale, according to the Allentown COMPASS Community School, 21 million Americans cannot read at all, and one-fifth of high school graduates fall into this category. In Allentown and the Lehigh Valley, students face crowded classrooms with little individual attention, and literacy is falling in consequence. The COMPASS Community School’s fact sheet explains that more than one fourth of all third graders—793 students—tested in Bethlehem and Allentown are both economically disadvantaged and not reading at the correct grade level.

Additionally, nearly 45 percent of Allentown youth live in poverty, and in 2005, nearly 600 students in the Allentown School District were homeless for some portion of the school year. In the area’s three urban COMPASS campuses, 40 to 98 percent of the student body (depending on the school as well as other factors) are eligible for the Free and Reduced lunch program. Additionally, five out of ten area COMPASS sites offer students the Back Pack Buddies program, through which students are sent home with back packs filled with food for the weekend.

Photos in video courtesy of Lehigh University CSO

Given these facts, afterschool programs are charged with the task of offering students a safe, fun environment where they can focus on personal and interpersonal growth—a refuge away from the streets. The Lehigh University Community Service Office and the Boys and Girls Club of Allentown are two local organizations looking to empower youth and offer new opportunities for children and teens in the Lehigh Valley. Through educational and recreational programs, both the CSO and BGCA of Allentown  strive to give every child an equal opportunity for success, especially in a climate of widening socioeconomic disparity.

Courtesy of Lehigh University CSO

Josh Leight, a graduate assistant in the CSO, organizes Lehigh’s unit of the federally funded afterschool homework program America Reads/Counts. Lehigh students are encouraged to work or volunteer within the program and join the group of almost one hundred annual tutors.

“Through the Community Service Office we reach out to children in South Bethlehem who are by far and large in poverty in many, many different ways," Leight said. "The biggest way we do that is through our America Reads/Counts program…[it] connects Lehigh tutors to over 100 children and students in South Bethlehem at Fountain Hill Elementary School and Broughal Middle School. I place about one hundred tutors at three different homework clubs.…Our tutors this year alone have provided over 5,000 hours of tutoring to children in South Bethlehem.”

Leight also offered insight into some of the CSO’s other main goals with Lehigh Valley youth.

“Some of our other main focuses…are to provide a safe place for kids to be. Kids living in South Bethlehem don’t have all that many great locations to go to after school, and if we can provide a safe space for them…we definitely take that opportunity to keep them focused on academics and also to get homework help and to meet with Lehigh students who are their neighbors that they might not know very well.”

He continued, “If they can see themselves as going to college, if they link to one individual Lehigh student and say, ‘I want to be like that guy,’ or ‘that girl’ and that involves going to college, we made a huge difference for that one kid.”

Lehigh’s CSO also hosts events like Spooktacular in the fall semester and Spring Fling towards the end of the academic year. Both events bring Bethlehem families onto Lehigh’s campus, where Lehigh students interact with and host activities for members of the Bethlehem community. Leight explained that at every program offered—from America Reads/Counts to events like Spooktacular and Spring Fling—food is always offered to students.

Courtesy of the BGCA of Allentown

In Allentown, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America has a host of locations offering different services to area youth. Nayab Khan is the director of the 6th Street unit, the largest of Allentown’s collection of clubs. The 6th Street club offers students computer labs, a game room, two libraries and an indoor swimming pool. Most importantly, however, the club offers students a safe, productive space where they can grow and develop as individuals and as members of a larger community.

“One of our main goals is making sure that children after school have a safe place, have a positive place,” said Khan. “And our motto for years in the BGCA…is that this is a place where you can be great, and this is where great futures start.”

Mainly an afterschool program, the BGCA of Allentown opens its doors at 3:30 every day, offering programming for children through the age of 11 until 7:15 p.m., as well as special teen hours until 9:30 p.m. Through educational services like tutoring, as well as recreational activities to keep students coming back and off the streets, the BGCA of Allentown aims to give its members—who pay just $15 per year for the club’s services—an equal opportunity that the area’s school and economic environments might not otherwise allow them.

One unique service that the 6th Street branch offers is FYI—Family-Youth Intervention. FYI supervisor John Eisenreich, Jr., explained the program, in which the United Way or county pinpoint certain children who are in particular need of the BGCA’s services.

Through a United Way grant, these students are then given a membership to the BGCA, along with additional attention and support. Transportation, for example, is a hindrance to many students getting to the clubs after school, explained Eisenreich, but through the FYI program, staff workers are able to shuttle students to and from the BGCA, ensuring they are in a safe environment after school.

The Allentown BGCA currently aids two FYI students identified by the United Way or county as in need of the program, and ten others are on the FYI program through a United Way grant that allows the BGCA itself to pinpoint children they feel are in need of extra assistance. The program makes certain that students in high-need situations—those involving domestic issues, for example—are given the attention, guidance and resources they need for an equal opportunity to succeed.

Khan said, “Let’s face it—at the end of the day, would we want our children out on the streets or in a safe space, a positive space?”

Khan is hopeful that the BGCA mission will empower and help youth to make a difference in their communities down the road.

“Overall, I hope long-term it would help the economic cycle and if they’re educated citizens, if they’re global ctizens who are caring members of their community, the hope is long term they will go back and contribute to their societies and their communities,” she said.”

By Jess Fromm and Melissa Collins