Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 1, 1992 TAG: 9203010120
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NEAL THOMPSON EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Shanta Kasey considers herself lucky.
At least she knows the drug dealers in her neighborhood - the Hurt Park housing project. The 12-year-old grew up with some of the kids now selling crack cocaine on her street corners. Because she knows them and they know her, they stay out of each other's way.
"You gotta get along," she explains.
A few years ago, Kasey discovered a new safe place to avoid the "bad stuff" on her streets. It's the West End Center, where she and her friends go after school for activities, snacks and tutoring.
"It's just like a substitute for a mom," said the Woodrow Wilson Middle School seventh-grader.
More youngsters than ever use West End as an after-school substitute for home. A few years ago, 20 to 30 came each day. Now, there are 116, with more on a waiting list, and director Kaye Hale has had to stagger the daily schedule so they all don't come at once.
"We're kind of at a crisis for space right now," said Hale, the director for six years.
Hale has applied for grant money for a new facility. Her goal is to find one big enough to house all her kids, so they all can come every day. But anything bigger than the few rooms she has would help.
Right now, West End's donated brick house on 12th Street is bursting at its seams with youngsters seeking a haven from the drugs and crime of their streets. Most come from low-income homes in the Hurt Park area and many come from broken homes.
Volunteer tutors fill in for parents unable or unwilling to help with homework. The volunteers tutor the children and also serve as counselors, mentors, role models and friends.
With the growing number of kids, the number of tutors grew from 15 to 70 in about five years.
Why?
"What the kids are saying is, `We don't want to get in trouble. There's trouble on the streets,' " Hale said.
"I think the drug problem has become so rampant in this neighborhood; we're about all there is for children in this neighborhood."
Kids get bored easily. When there's little to do in certain neighborhoods these days, young and impressionable - and idle - minds can wander toward some dangerous options.
Malikah Whidbee, 13, thinks she knows where she'd be if not at the West End Center: "In the street . . . probably pregnant now."
Whidbee said it's boring at home and it's boring at school.
But one of the requirements to get to the West End Center is to go to school. So Whidbee goes. "I wouldn't really be interested in school if it wasn't for this," she said.
One recent Monday, Whidbee and her friends whizzed around the rink at Star City Roller Skating Center, which provides buses to deliver youngsters to the rink twice a month.
Some of the boys, acting like boys do, linked arms to form a chain and mow down slower skaters. Whidbee is nimble on her skates, though, and slipped through the chain to join her giggling friends on the sidelines.
Huffing and puffing, Whidbee explained why she likes West End.
"It gets you away from all them drug dealers and stuff . . . and there's cute boys," she said. "I think a lot of kids should have a center in their neighborhood."
The West End Center opened in 1979 and serves youngsters ages 5 to 16. It is mostly funded by churches, but also gets some private and corporate donations and is given a lot of materials, including the recent gift of a computer.
West End Center starts filling up about 2:30 each afternoon. Different age groups go on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but all ages are welcome for the 5:15 to 6:15 p.m. tutoring sessions each of those days. All ages can attend Mondays, when they go on field trips, and Fridays, when they go to the YMCA.
In recent years, the center has added a few weekend activities and a daily summer session.
The regular Tuesday-Thursday sessions usually include bowling, swimming, an art class, sex-education counseling or a birthday party.
When the youngsters are not doing any of that, West End looks like a playground.
Girls sprint through the gravel alley trying to reach the finish line first while boys practice their Michael Jordan-style dunks in a broken plastic garbage can.
The real hoop and net were stolen.
As much as they do for these kids, though, it rarely seems enough, said associate director Bettie Williams.
"They're just here two hours, and that's nothing. That's nothing compared to the time they spend in the streets and their so-called homes," Williams said.
So the three West End staffers - combined salary, $43,000 - and the other volunteers learn to enjoy success in small doses.
"A lot of these kids were candidates for dropping out," Hale said.
Now some of them, like Malikah Whidbee, go to school just so they can come to the center.
"We have to take small successes like that," Hale said.
by CNB