boys and girls 1

Well, this is my first blog post as the Social Work club president. I sort of inherited this role, and it's not necessarily something I would have jumped for, but it was there and I took it.

Our group is taking on a semester long project working at the Boys and Girls club, and the specific branch is pretty destitute. The neighborhood is entirely low income housing and there are some projects not too far from the building. I got out of my car, and I could feel myself uncomfortable in this new setting. that's just it though, it's a new setting, and new doesn't mean dangerous. At least I thought that until I got to the front door. The windows all had been kicked and were cracked, and there were bullet holes in the front door. Now is the time to begin feeling uneasy, but I went ahead inside and greeted the staff members and introduced myself as a volunteer. One of the staff members, Scott, showed me around the place and he put me in the homework room. two students were finishing an assignment on the 13 colonies, they were both in fifth grade. Neither of them could sit still. they both seemed to have attention problems, and also behavioral issues like throwing pencils, rocking back and forth in the seats, and screaming. There was another student mentor there, her name was Melody and she was part of the staff. She is a junior in high school and has a desire to go to college. I thought it was wonderful that she was spending time at this place getting this valuable experience with these children. I wish I would have been doing something like that at her age. Snack time came at 6:15, and most of the kids had been there since 3:30, and all they gave them was a cookie. They wouldn't be home until 8:30 at night to eat something else.

Essentially, there is no structure to the boys and girls club. Part of that is the lack of funds. What really irks me, is that these are children and they are innocent, but our educational system is just so that wealthy neighborhood children have access to all resources, while children from poor areas have very limited access to much else outside of the home and poorly funded school. This is a structural cause of poverty, because if you are born in a poor area, and go to a poorly funded public school, how is it possible to compete with children from other more well endowed areas when the playing field is so uneven from the start?

Making real change in a community could be very exciting.