Spring Break
Community center gets student boost
Mari Sapina-Kerkhove
Daily Staff Writer
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"I would say that this is the best case ever ... they are doing an outstanding job," the communication studies professor said, referring to Katrina Meacham, Erica Jacobs, Matt Adams, Gaby Delgadillo and Laura Pignone, public relations students
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According to Varona, the original assignment for his organizational communications class was to engage in community service. His students were then to analyze an organization's communication needs and put together an intervention plan in a nine-page report.
But this group of students, Varona said, "is doing things more in depth."
According to Meacham, a public relations major, taking action seemed like the best way to help.
"At first, the assignment started as us helping kids with their homework, but then we realized that we could actually help the community center out much more," she said.
Adams, a public relations junior, said after initially thinking he just wanted to get the assignment done as quickly as possible, he soon changed his mind.
"This is for a class, but at the same time it's for a good cause," he said. "It's a really, really good program."
Meacham said the group now meets at the center near campus every Wednesday from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. and works on ideas to help publicize the organization in the community.
"Our mission to them is public relations to get volunteers and donations," Meacham said.
According to Sandra Madrigal, the center's program director, the students' efforts in promoting the Third Street Community Center to the public is a much-needed contribution from which both sides can benefit.
"We try to promote a way they can relate to real-world experience; at the same time it helps (us) to have resources that normally we wouldn't be able to have," she said. "They help us communicate to the outside world."
Rodrigo Garcia, assistant program director for the community center, said the center's prominence is crucial to a successful outcome in fund raising.
"We need a continuous presence in the community," he said. "When we go out and ask for support, it's hard when people don't know who we are and what we do."
According to Madrigal, the Third Street Community Center was founded in 1998 and serves 350 to 400 families per year, about 98 percent of them Latinos.
The center is located between St. John and St. James streets, in the basement of the First Unitarian Church of San Jose. The church has donated the space to the organization, but there is no religious affiliation to the church, Madrigal said.
"(The center is a) nonprofit organization that focuses on bridging the digital and informational divide in the community," she said.
Forty-six percent of families served by the center have a yearly income of less than $10,000, Madrigal said.
"We try to focus our energy on helping whole families," she said. "We focus on the whole family by looking at children first."
The center's After School Academic Program plays a central role in providing downtown children with the support they need to succeed in the future, Madrigal said.
According to Madrigal, many low-income children living in downtown San Jose live just a few blocks away from the university campus and museums, but they have never set foot in any one of these institutions.
"It's like families living in the shadows of everyone else, but they have the right to feel that they belong in their community and neighborhood," she said.
The center's after-school program serves students who have scored in the lowest 25 percentile on the state's standardized testing system and is trying to bridge the academic gap with programs focusing on math, science and literacy in a playful way, Madrigal said.
Success has been visible, she said.
"All of our youth went up 40 percent in their scores in the first six months," the program director said. "One-and-a-half years later, 100 percent of kids are at or above grade level."
Aside from the after-school program, the Third Street Community Center also offers a support group for women, computer literacy classes as well as English as a second language classes, Madrigal said.
According to Garcia, the center, which only has two paid staff members, is in constant need of volunteers. Their contribution to various programs has been crucial, he said.
SJSU student volunteers who come to the center through the service learning project have been a great asset, Garcia said, not only in directly working with the community, but also in using their knowledge to help with tasks such as creating a curriculum for ESL classes and refurbishing donated computers.
Or, as in the case of the five public relations students, helping them with publicity.
Through their weekly visits at the center, the students quickly realized the need for more publicity to increase donations and the number of volunteers.
According to Meacham, they contacted the local press to inform the public about the center and encourage donations. They came up with brochures targeting college and private high school students who are required to do 25 hours of community service per semester. And they are helping with an informational parents' seminar on the importance of education.
In the meantime, the amount of work they have been doing has become more than the 15 hours required for the original class assignment, senior public relations major Jacobs said. She estimated that, including activities such as printing and distributing fliers, the total time invested in this project will be close to 40 hours altogether.
"We've become attached to the cause," she said. "We're taking more time and we love it. We're all starting to think that we might even be there and help out afterward."
Adams said he could see himself staying on and doing public relations for the community center even after his class ends.
"If we could do that, that would bring more volunteers, bring more donations - it would benefit the place greatly," he said.
For Varona, the students' continuing enthusiasm with the project is not surprising.
"This is a group that got together from the first day of class ... and has been working so efficiently and effectively," he said. "It's a unique case for me so far. I am very happy with that."
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