IBA summer program winds to a close

Source: The South End News
Date: 2008/08/21

By Nick Katz

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Cacique Youth Learning Center, the nexus of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción’s summer arts and leadership programming, celebrated its fifth anniversary on August

14. And while many doubted whether the youth center would last one year, Sabrina Pilet-Jones for one now sees a real future for it.

“I hope it’s around when my son grows up,” Pilet-Jones, 19, of the South End, said, pointing to her 16-month-old son, ravenously shoving a half of a hot dog in his mouth at Thursday night’s awards and summer’s end ceremony.

It’s no wonder she feels like that. Since she began working with the Cacique Youth Arts program, Pilet-Jones has gone from taking classes in silk-screening to teaching a group of 20 or so kids this summer the finer points of sculpture, drama and dance. “Some of the girls had never touched clay before, but I helped them get a feel for it and become more professional as an artist,” she said.

And it’s not just about the art. Jessica Gonzalez, 17, of the South End, said she had virtually no interest in art when she showed up for the program this summer – and she still doesn’t. But what the program gave her, said, was more important: She discovered how much she enjoys helping others and says she plans to pursue a college education in social work.

Over the past five years, the Cacique Youth Learning Center has specialized in helping local youth discover things like that. Cacique, operated in conjunction with IBA, the social service arm of Villa Victoria, works with local teens, hiring them as peer leaders throughout the summer, and involving them in positive character building experiences through their three main programs: the Teacher’s Assistant Program (TAP), the Youth Exploration and Leadership program (YEL), and the aforementioned Cacique Youth Arts program (CYA). The TAP program puts local young adults in mentoring and teaching positions in the community for much younger children, while YEL offers teens the opportunity to explore becoming leaders through different exercises, including working in the local garden or even meeting with one of the architects behind Villa Victoria. Many of the teens involved in the program are from the South End –specifically, the South End’s many different housing communities – but others are from different parts of the city, including Roxbury and Dorchester. The first Cacique summer program started five years ago with just five peer leaders; this year, the program has grown to 50 peer leaders this year.

One of the reasons the program has become so popular is obvious after talking to a few of the kids – they all feel like they’re part of a big family.

“[Art] helps me express myself, which is very fun,” said Jeanny Mejia, 16, of Dorchester. “And everything at IBA has a good vibe.”

The program’s end of summer celebration drew a big crowd, with more than 100 friends, family member, alumni and peer leaders filling the two levels of the Jorge Hernandez Cultural Center. The evening was an opportunity to recognize the work of the Cacique youth, on display in virtually every corner of the converted church and community space. Paintings by the budding artists in the Cacique arts program filled both walls and a neighboring art gallery. Multimedia poems that touched on everything to drugs to gentrification played on a big-screen TV; one featured images of yellow backhoes and dollar signs as the artist wondered how long she would be able to stay in her home. The Youth Arts’ theatre group performed a short play on dilemmas and problems facing inner-city teens, titled “Through the Eyes of the Youth”; teens and young adults rapped about their lives on stage, and the evening wrapped up with a performance from the Urban Fusion Dance Troupe that had everyone dancing the aisles.

Julio Cesar Roman, the whirlwind-like youth program manager, joked in his opening remarks that the fact that he and others had been there for five years was not just a cause for celebration. “It also means we’re getting old,” Cesar Roman said.