Features

¡Adelante Niñas!

Community Bridges gives girls a jump start

BY CAROLYN FEOLA

After school on a recent Tuesday, 15 fourth and fifth grade girls come chattering into the multi-purpose room at Oak View Elementary. The fresh young faces are Latina, Asian, African-American. Within a few minutes, Alexandra Desautels, elementary program leader for Community Bridges, has the girls grouped off and settled into their seats. Alex’s lesson plan calls for the girls to spend their first 45 minutes doing homework with help from interns and mentors, and the last 45 minutes learning about exercise and its health benefits.

But the guidance for these girls goes beyond this bustling multi-purpose room.

Most middle-class girls will experience times of confusion, self-doubt, and even unhappiness during their growing-up years. But even so, they are more likely to weather them successfully and not leave school as readily as girls from less financially fortunate families.

Community Bridges (CB) is a Silver Spring organization that acknowledges this disparity, but believes in the potential of girls in every economic bracket. CB’s flagship program, Jump Start Girls! Adelante Niñas!, is an empowerment curriculum designed to give a boost to girls who, in addition to handling the typical trials of adolescence, may be mastering a new language, navigating two cultures, and living with parents who are coping with crowded schedules and stretched paychecks.

"Commitment to each girl"

"The Long Branch community has no other multi-year, multicultural program that teaches the most at-risk girls conflict resolution, interpersonal skills, health and prevention, community activism, leadership skills, and creative expression," Naomi says. "Our commitment to each girl extends from the day she enters the program through middle school graduation."

Over 150 girls from low-income families in the Long Branch community have participated in the program, many for three and four years. The majority are immigrants or children of immigrants from Central America, the Caribbean, African countries, and Southeast Asia, as well as African-American girls. The girls are selected in cooperation with their schools, according to Naomi.

"Each girl is referred by her guidance counselor based on eligibility for free or reduced meals, and indicators of high risk or unfulfilled promise," she says.

"Out of their boundaries"

Christine Armstrong is a 6th grader with Jump Start Girls! Adelante Niñas!. She started when she was in fourth grade, and has grown more sure of herself with each year. In the past she might not have been comfortable "speaking in big groups," she says, but Jump Start Girls! Adelante Niñas! has opened that door for her.

"I used to be shy," she says. "Now I can talk to people more."

Once homework is finished, everyone heads outside to Oak View’s playground for some exercise. The Latino community in particular is susceptible to heart disease and diabetes, Alex says, so one goal is educate the girls on the connection between exercise and better health. They spend 20 minutes working out and learning to monitor their heart rates.

But Jump Start Girls! Adelante Niñas! is about creativity and fun, too, so the exercise lessons have been rounded out with a dance workshop led by Adrienne Clancy of ClancyWorks. Adrienne has spent three sessions with the girls, which has culminated in the girls pairing off and creating their own dance routine. Each duo gets to perform their dance to the whole group.

Alex says the dance workshop has visibly built confidence in the girls. "It was really neat to see them perform, because there were some girls who so far this year had been shy about getting up in front of the group," she said. "This program is pushing the girls to places to where they were previously uncomfortable, or had low expectations of how they could perform, and I see how proud they are to accomplish something new and out of their boundaries."

As with the dance workshop, most of the girls’ activities have a tangible benefit, such as a learned skill, and a more subtle, psychological benefit. Alex describes a recent field trip to an ice skating rink, which was a brand-new experience for some of the girls. As they learned how to move around on the ice, they also learned how to move beyond fear.

"Some of them were so freaked out. So I kept saying, ‘You can do it. You can do it.’ Then one of them just went skating off on her own and she said, "I can do it!"

An uncertain future?

Community Bridges is funded by a variety of local private and government grants. Adrienne, for example, was able to teach her dance workshop through a grant from the Arts Council of Montgomery County. Larger funders include the Meyer Foundation, Freddie Mac, and Philip Graham. Last fiscal year, 20 percent of Community Bridges’ budget (about $48,000) came from Montgomery County’s Health and Human Services funding.

The coming fiscal year, however, may be short that 20 percent. Community Bridges recently received the news that Community Bridges was cut from County Executive Douglas Duncan’s proposed 2004 budget. Naomi has since mobilized CB’s board of directors, staff members, and concerned parents, who are lobbying the County Council to reinstate funding for Community Bridges. The need to contact council members now is urgent, Naomi says–the council will vote on the budget in May.

"If funding is not restored, Community Bridges will cut critical staff positions," Naomi says. "We will most likely not be able to add a new group of 4th graders to our program, for the first time since 1998. We will have to cut all counseling and outreach to families."

The proposed cuts come at a particularly bad time, she adds. "In a year when immigrant and families with low incomes have been especially hard hit by the downturn in our economy and anti-immigrant sentiments, the county budget has cut a model educational program for some of the most vulnerable students in one of the most vulnerable communities in Montgomery County," Naomi says.

But in the meantime, before the fiscal year ends, the girls at Oak View are still learning and growing. They bolster each other and laugh among themselves, and feel the support from the dedicated adults around them. As long as there is funding left, Community Bridges will be there for them.

"I think that the most rewarding part of this is working with girls who are entering into their adolescence," Alex says. "They are coming into a time where they have problems, and I’m seeing them enter into community of friendships and trust."

To help Community Bridges in its efforts to retain funding, please contact the office of the Montgomery County Council at 240-777-7900 or County.Council@co.mo.md.us. Council members Tom Perez, George Leventhal, and Steve Silverman are the council’s Health and Human Services Committee members. Perez has voiced his support for reinstating Community Bridges’ funding and can be contacted at Councilmember.Perez@co.mo.md.us. For more information, or to learn about volunteering with Jump Start Girls! Adelante Niñas!, please call 301-585-7155 or email community_bridges@hotmail.com.