All one 'hood at Blackstone
Source: MySouthEnd.com
Date: 2008/08/28
Link to Full Text: http://www.mysouthend.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=&sc3=&id=79536
They’re like street pick-up games - but with a message.
This past summer, youth program One ’Hood Peace League has been working with local young people, bringing kids from across the South End and Lower Roxbury together under "one ’hood" through the medium of basketball. On August 20, the program played their final game of the summer, as part of the South End Lower Roxbury Youth Worker Alliance’s Summer Sizzle celebration at Blackstone Community Center.
The event was a fitting end to initiatives - including the Youth Worker’s Alliance’s work to support local youth programs - that have worked to bring young people from disparate and sometimes warring housing developments together for positive interaction. Residents from across the neighborhood and people from many different youth organizations came together to honor those who dedicated themselves to the South End youth, and to celebrate the end of the summer with a little barbecue and basketball. Adults and children of all ages enjoyed hamburgers and hotdogs, made lanyard beaded necklaces, rode bikes, hung from the monkey bars, and danced to the DJ’s beats. The East Coast School of Combined Martial Art at Blackstone Community Center and the NOVA Dance troop out of the Boys and Girls Club showed off their moves to an energetic crowd.
On the other side of the playground, an equally diverse crowd cheered on the One ’Hood’s All-Star basketball game.
"There are not many programs that are able to pull in youths from this many housing developments. We are not having incidents, we’re not having beefs, we’re not having problems, and we’re moving towards unity in the neighborhood," said David Kay, one of the founders of the One ’Hood program and director of development for Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA).
Two years ago, Kay and Jose Rodriguez, an organizer with the Blackstone Community Center, founded the program after they saw youth in the different housing developments were not getting along. Rodriguez remembered when he was growing up in the South End, basketball was a way for him to connect with the other kids in the neighborhood.
To build the teams, Kay and Rodriguez asked local organizations and people such as Blackstone, IBA and Boston Center for Youth and Families street workers to refer kids from different housing developments to play in the league. As trust is often a problem with local youth, One Hood chose "well known people from their developments" to coach the teams, said Kay.
One Hood’s goal is not only to create camaraderie, but also to educate the kids. All of the players participate in the workshops given through the Center for the Study of Sport in Society by Antonio Arrendel. Kay says Arrendel is the "perfect" person to teach them "because he was where they are" - he got himself off the streets, put himself through college, and now works at the Northeastern University. The workshops teach the kids conflict resolution, decision-making, anger management and general life skills.
The program was so successful the previous season that kids just started showing up when the summer season began this year. One returning South End player says that he came back because One ’Hood "keeps [him] off the streets" and "out of trouble."
"It speaks to the power of the program that young people were seeking us out and coming back on their own, saying ’I want to play, I want to participate in the One ’Hood Peace League,’" explained Kay, adding that he hopes that funding will allow them to keep One Hood going in the fall and allow them to expand the program and formalize a curriculum.
