WOW Kids Outreach runs a tutoring/mentoring program on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4-6pm. Like everything else we do, we have a ton of boys who come to our program. The boys usually out number the girls in most of our programs. We desperately need guys to come and invest in these boys who are going to grow up to be men one day.
The tutoring program is what I love most. I'm in college to be a teacher, so it's a perfect fit for me. I have volunteered at East Lake Academy for three years and I interned at East Lake Elementary. I have been in these children's schools and they are broken. Very broken. Believe it or not, the elementary school is actually worse than the middle school.
The city of Chattanooga and Hamilton County are letting us use the old Piney Woods Elementary school building right across the street from Emma Wheeler Homes for our tutoring program. It hasn't been used as a school since 1992. From the outside it looks abandoned, but the inside is very nice and full of potential. Before we came in, it was a huge building that was underused with just a Family Resource Center. Now it is full of kids every Tuesday and Thursday.
Our tutoring program is off to a wonderful start and every week we talk and tweak stuff to make it even better. This is not your average help-with-homework-and-go-home tutoring program. We split the kids into three groups: Pre-K, K-2nd grade, and 3rd-8th grade. 3-8th grade are put onto different colored teams and transition throughout five different classes in two hours. The five classes are Math, Language Arts, Bible, Manners, and Drama.
We don't just have classes. We also have a computer lab with twenty new computers that were donated. We also have a library that has been organized and labeled with a ton of great books. We even have a thrift store full of clothes, school supplies, and toys for the kids to go shopping when they earn WOW Bucks for good behavior.
It doesn't stop there! The kids are able to earn Sunday trips every two weeks if they have good behavior. These trips can be anywhere from the aquarium to the zoo to on top of the mountain to hike and play on the Pumpkin Patch Playground. All of the places I just listed are places that these kids have never been before! These kids live in the shadow of the mountain, but most of them have never driven up it before. Most of them have never been to a museum before. Most of them have never been to the Chattanooga zoo or the aquarium. One of our goals are exposing these kids who live in the projects to the wonderful world around them that they hardly ever get to see.
All of this is happening every week and we are still working on putting even more into our program. We talked to people today about starting a basket ball program this June. One of my biggest desires is tapping into every kid's potential. Whether that is through a basket ball program, a jewelry making class, a knitting class, a computers class, etc.
What we desperately need is YOU! We can do all this without you! I can have all these wonderful ideas, but it takes you to kick them off. If you just want to volunteer and be that one person who gives a kid the attention that they really want or you have a skill that you would like to teach them like computers, drama, music, sports, chess, photography, knitting, etc every little bit helps!
I recently went to a conference where a man was teaching a photography workshop with inner-city boys. The boys loved it. He shared that one day it hit him that he would die and all his knowledge would die with him unless he took the time to pass it on to the next generation.
We are working with Chattanooga's future. The next generation. You decide what kind of Chattanooga that you want your kids to grow up in. Now is the time to invest. We can't wait until these kids are grown or getting in trouble to help them.
Last week, I was dropping kids off at home in Emma Wheeler after our tutoring program took a field trip to Silverdale's fall festival. It was late and the moon was already up. We drove right past three cop cars that were surrounding a boy who looked like he couldn't be older than twelve or thirteen. They had him sitting on the curb with his arms handcuffed behind his back.
When we drove past, he looked up at us and the expression on his face was one of the saddest things that I have ever seen.
"Just think." My mom said. "If he has been with us tonight at our tutoring program, he wouldn't be getting arrested right now."
Who knows what talent that boy has. Who knows if his talents will one day rot away on a jail cell because of a stupid decision he made as a teenager persuaded by some wanna be gangsters looking for something to do on a Thursday night.
(Newspaper article about Chattanooga's gang problem)
I sincerely believe that the only way Chattanooga is going to overcome our gang problem is by the Church being willing to go out of our comfort zones. A lot of people have never been to the projects or been a minority before. I know that I never had until we went to East Lake Courts to pass out clothes a couple years ago, but God opened up a huge door and now I help run an inner-city ministry. Can you say WOW?!
Now I'm in the projects almost everyday and I love it.
Why don't you come down to the projects and check out our tutoring program? We would love to have you visit (the kids love visitors!) and check it out. Shoot me an email if you're interested (parisakins@gmail.com)!
Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education. She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers. She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in East Lake. She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.
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