Latin American Youth Center

Good afternoon, Chairman Wells and members of the D.C. City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today at this hearing on the Department of Human Services’ proposed FY 2008 budget.

I’m here today in my capacity as Executive Director of the Latin American Youth Center and as a founding Board member of DC Alliance of Youth Advocates (DCAYA), a coalition of more than 50 youth-serving organizations.

Before I discuss Mayor Fenty’s proposed FY 20008 budget for the Department of Human Services, I’d like to share with you a little information about the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC).

LAYC is a network of youth centers, charter schools, and social enterprises with a shared commitment to helping youth become successful young adults.

Our anchor site in the Columbia Heights neighborhood is a community-based, multi-cultural youth and family development organization founded in the late 1960s and incorporated in 1974 as a non-profit organization. We work with more than 3,000 young people each year, ages 5-24, primarily from the Latino, African-American, African and Caribbean communities. We provide critical social services and numerous education and employment programs, working with both in-school and out-of-school youth. In the past decade, we have also founded three public charter schools, YouthBuild, The Next Step and Latin American Montessori Bilingual (LAMB).

Now, I want to turn to DHS’s FY 2008 Budget. I am very concerned that the budget proposes a dramatic cut – a decrease of $6.2 million from FY 2007 levels – in Child Care Services.

This proposed cut is bad for young people and bad for the city. I want to offer an example of one very promising program that is supported by Child Care Services and could be harmed by such a reduction.

It’s a new program, offered for the first time this school year, directed toward recent immigrants and other newcomers to the DC Public School system. The program is supported through DHS’s Early Care and Education Administration (ECEA).

This school year, LAYC began working with students at three high schools and middle schools in the city to provide English assistance, homework help, tutoring and other educational, recreational and leadership opportunities to students identified by the DCPS Bilingual Education Office as Non-English Proficient or Limited English Proficient (NEP/LEP).

In addition to the academic and recreational components, the program also offers workshops on teen pregnancy prevention, substance abuse and smoking prevention, health and nutrition, and violence prevention.

The new program works to ease the transition for recent immigrants and other newcomers to the DC school system. A core objective of the program is to reduce the drop-out rate among these Latino, Asian and African students.

LAYC is partnering with Wilson and Roosevelt high schools and Deal and MacFarland middle schools. Currently, there are 125 students participating at Wilson, Deal and MacFarland. We just launched the program at Roosevelt this month. At Wilson High School, the 30 students currently in the program come from ten different countries.

An important feature of the program is that it's offered right in the schools, reaching students in an environment they're already used to and comfortable in. The programs utilize a volunteer workforce of over 25 adults from American University, University of the District of Columbia, Georgetown University and Catholic University.

A site coordinator works full-time in each of the schools. During the school day, the coordinator acts as liaison and mentor for target participants and their parents to promote academic and social success. The site coordinator also meets regularly with the participants’ teachers to address concerns or areas that need improvement.

At Wilson and Deal, there are two-and-a half hours of after-school programming three days a week. The first hour is dedicated to academic work. In the remaining hour and a half, youth participate in arts and recreational activities. At MacFarland, the program runs every day of the week. The MacFarland program was able to secure a donation of 6 new computers, which are used by ESL classes during the day and after school. Participants in each of the schools also receive assistance registering for the Summer Youth Employment Program.

Coordinators at the schools are able to refer students and their families to other programs and services that LAYC offers, including computer classes, social services, and family-to-family mentoring. As such, the program serves as a key connection point to other services for students and their families.

The NEP/LEP program is a good example of the city government working with a non-profit organization in a school setting to support and supplement programs that are available through the schools. This type of partnership enables students to tap into additional services and programs and it enables the government to tap into the experience of local organizations that have particular knowledge working with certain communities.

This innovative approach is the type of program the city can embrace, helping young people at-risk to drop out of school.

It’s just one example. But, it’s an important reminder of the many different types of youth programming and services that are needed in our community.

I hope that this program and others that are impacted by this $6.2 million cut are restored to the DHS budget.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.