By Emily Randall
Northeast News
Jan. 20, 2010

Mattie Rhodes Center will soon be working to keep even more Northeast children healthy, out of gangs and engaged after school.

Thanks to a $250,000 federal earmark in the 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act, Mattie Rhodes will be able to broaden its approach in the Northeast community, in particular focusing on Hispanic youth in gangs. Mattie Rhodes Executive Director John Fierro said this would include expanding school-based intervention programs in the high schools, the after-school program at the Mattie Rhodes Northeast Satellite, creating a new holistic anti-bullying program in elementary schools and more.

“Violence is going up,” Fierro said. “More people are unemployed. More kids are needing a place to go to be safe. It’s been challenging to us [in the past 12-18 months as funding has decreased], and these dollars are huge.”

Fierro said Mattie Rhodes Center has annually submitted requests for Congressional earmarks through Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II’s office, and luckily this year among the laundry list of needs in Kansas City and across the nation, the House Appropriations Committee selected Mattie Rhodes.

“I know the term earmark conjures images of ‘bridges to nowhere’ and pork barrel projects,” Cleaver said in a press release, “but I think the projects we were able to secure funding for tell a different story. I can think of no better way to spend federal dollars than investing in our young people and training people for good jobs in our community.”

Kansas City’s Guadalupe Centers Culinary Arts Institute Job Training Center also received $200,000.

Fierro said one way the $250,000 will go to work in Northeast will be the installation of a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services-recommended anti-bullying program, Olweus Bullying Prevention. The program will target students between 6-15 years old.

Fierro said Mattie Rhodes hopes to introduce the program in McCoy Elementary, James Elementary and Northeast K-8 schools, although the schools haven’t been confirmed yet.

Another way the earmark will be put to use is by bringing back social workers at Northeast and East High Schools. This past school year, Mattie Rhodes funded the social workers, who worked with 80-100 students in one six-month period, helping them deal with suicide attempts, homelessness, domestic violence at home and more.

However, this school year, although Mattie Rhodes still served students from these schools, the organization couldn’t afford to keep the professionals in the buildings full time. Fierro said he hoped to bring them back into the schools once the federal earmark was allocated.

Additionally, he said the funds would help Mattie Rhodes serve more children in the after-school program by adding staff.

“We have a small staff limited with the number of kids they serve,” he said. “We want to create that one adult to eight to 10 kid ratio, and we want to make sure we can serve more kids than we have in the last few years.”

One segment of the Mattie Rhodes after-school program is the Explore Program, which serves youths who are at high risk of joining gangs, becoming pregnant and having unhealthy home lives. The program offers a safe environment and teaches respect, leadership and civic duty.

Mattie Rhodes Program Director Luis Cordova said it has been challenging working with these high-risk young people.

“We’re trying to change a learning that this is normal,” Cordova said. “It’s not normal to commit a crime, to hurt your mate [or] your mom.”

There have been success stories with the Explore Program, Cordova said. The young teens were offered a chance to eat at a four-star restaurant on the Country Club Plaza if they would complete an etiquette class. They all completed the class and had a good time dressing up in ties and prom dresses.

“We hope that we would see a reduction in violence in young people [once the earmark is put to use],” Fierro said. “We’d hope they’re not going to get into trouble … [and] we want to see an engaged family to come and be a part of these programs with their kids.”