CSUDH and AmeriCorps Reach Out To Carson
The university community and constituents - students, faculty, and staff, schoolchildren, parents, and teachers - turned out to hear the good news: CSU Dominguez Hills is reaching out to help those in need in the city of Carson - just as it has in Compton, Harbor City, and Wilmington.
That was the announcement on the warm Nov. 3 morning in the cool of the Annalee Avenue Elementary School auditorium, where Cynthia Johnson, assistant professor, Nursing, heralded the "the jolt of new energy to the civic sector" in the form of AmeriCorps, staffed by volunteers, including CSUDH students and staff.
Johnson's audience included George Pardon, vice president, Administration and Finance; Billie Blair, dean, School of Education; Abel Arvizu Whittemore, dean, School of Health; Virginia Long, psychologist, Student Health & Psychological Services; Leon Cohen, director, Community Service Learning; Season Eckhardt, service learning, Office of the CSU Chancellor; and, Stan Hébert, assistant vice president, University and Government Relations.
Also in attendance were Pete Fajardo, mayor of Carson; Melvin Stokes, representing Omar Bradley, mayor of Compton; Joseph Scollo, director, elementary school services, Los Angeles Unified School District; and Eleanor Mack, principal, Annalee Avenue Elementary LEARN School.
The program designed for Carson is a partnership between CSU Dominguez Hills and Service Learning for Family Health, which stems from a statewide effort combining the efforts of five CSU campuses, CSU Service Learning, the private sector, and state government. Its mission: "To develop and support community-university partnerships that will directly impact the health and human service needs identified by community-based agencies servicing children and families; enhance the quality of student learning; and, promote an ethic of service."
CSUDH student Keith Fullbright, himself an AmeriCorps volunteer, told the gathering "without your support it can't go on. With your support, it can go on forever."
Johnson agreed. "'Getting things done' is the motto of AmeriCorps,'" she said amid cheers. "We get things done." And, she forecast "the idealism, the enthusiasm, and the can-do spirit" now headed to Carson will succeed as it has in neighboring communities across the South Bay and South Central Los Angeles.
"AmeriCorps," Johnson explained, "is the glue that bonds free people together."
Patterned after the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps engages more than 40,000 Americans stateside every year in intensive service. They train volunteers, tutor and mentor at-risk youth, build housing, clean up rivers and streams, help seniors live independently, provide emergency and long-term assistance to victims of natural disasters, and attend to other community needs.
The program is dedicated to increasing the capability of people to improve the conditions of their own lives. It is a 12-month program for men and women ages 18 to 24.
Fajardo thanked Johnson and the University for their efforts to "improve the quality of life for our citizens" and "improve the quality of education for our children."
That is the purpose of service learning, Eckhardt: "It is designed from the bottom up with grass roots support." And, quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she added that it is built with the premise, "'Everyone can be great because everyone can serve.'"
Pardon told the crowd, "People say that 'America has lost its moral compass.' You are evidence that's not true. There is hope for America. And that begins with you."
Keynoter Long, who coordinated the "Hope to GROW" program at CSUDH for schoolchildren in the community, focused on the inherent strength of people helping one another: "When we give forward, we give forward to the never-ending circle of life."
Adding that "we cannot separate our well being from the well being of those around us," Long said that "we should honor those who came before us by giving forwardto the lives of those around us." Only then, she explained, can the circle be complete.
But, she cautioned, remember that knowledge and intelligence without wisdom, compassion, and humanity are dangerous: "Help your students become humans."
- T.W.
