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Youth center does more by empowering the community
  
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By RYAN HICKMAN
In nearly two decades of devoting her life to healing her poverty- and crime-ridden neighborhoods, Sylvia Bolling knows the struggles and rewards of serving children and families in the rough communities along Aldine Mail Route as the founder and director of the Aldine Youth Center.
The process of bettering a community, Bolling said, is quickly erasing any notions that her youth center is just giving away food, services and much-needed direction for people in the area.
“You can’t change a life,” Bolling said inside the center’s main building at 4700 Aldine Mail Route. “But you can empower them to change their lives.”
For instance, when folks come in for food from its food pantry, they have to invest two hours of volunteer time in exchange for the food.
“You don’t come to just take,” Bolling said. “You come to share, that’s what really heals a community.”
Bolling has passed on her teaching and devoted ways to her daughter, Shawna Roy, who is the center’s director of operations.
“We want them to know that they are part of their own solution. In order to get a blessing you have to be your own blessing,” Roy said. “They help us, we help you; that’s the way a community center should be.”
And she explained that people who need food most likely need something else.
“Nobody needs one thing,” she said.
Roy pointed out that within a 2-mile radius on Aldine Mail Route there are 12 schools and five low-income apartment complexes.
The center started nearly two decades ago right in the neighborhoods it serves now, but without the buildings. Bolling began drug awareness programs, a mother-daughter forum, an after-school program and activities in the apartment complexes.
“We did what we could do with no money,” she said.
Then in 1995, they received the 6.8 acres the center is on now and it has become so much more over the last 13 years.
“The center’s value is that it’s accessible to low-income families who have trouble navigating the city to get the things they need to better themselves,” Bolling said.
And that’s a challenge in the poverty-filled neighborhoods they provide for.
“There’s no services, no programs in the area,” she said. “We’re trying to provide as many things out of this spot.”
To read more about the Aldine Youth Center and how to help, log onto www.thehumbleobserver.com.
There are around 30 programs at the center such as computer, exercise, GED, defensive driving and English as a second language classes, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, youth and family counseling, sports activities and job training.The center has a resale shop but it isn’t just a place to make money (“It pretty much covers our light bill,” Roy said.) or provide cheap clothing alternatives for local folks, rather it’s primarily for on-the-job training in conjunction with the center’s school of business for local teens.The kids in the program run through four areas: cashier, sorting and inventory, marketing and merchandising.The center rewards graduates of the program with a $100 stipend as they go out looking for a real job.“These kids are work ready,” said Mary Chong, an assistant in the business program who oversees the shop. “So far this year, we’ve had nine of our kids be employed out of this program.”Recently, though, Aldine Youth has been the victim of the crime that’s so rampant around the area.Thieves stole the batteries and the catalytic converters out of the vans and robbed and vandalized the resale shop. The center’s vans now sit at night in the driveways of staff members because of the problems they’ve had in the past.“It’s a huge hassle, headache and waste of time,” Roy said about having the vans off site. “We’re looking how to get a garage or a storage unit. If we want to keep serving the kids, we need those vans.”All the center’s copper wire was stolen in February and put it out of commission for two weeks. Luckily for them, an electrician donated his time and materials to get them back up and running.“If it wasn’t for his services, we’d still be in the dark for sure,” Roy said. “We don’t have those additional funds.”Bolling, who used to work for Aldine Independent School District, explained that poverty breeds crime in the area and “in order to impact crime we have to impact poverty.”And that all starts with the family, the part of the community that Aldine Youth Center is trying to impact the most. “The best thing you can do for a child is heal their family,” Bolling said. “What we thought was going to be just a youth program has become a family healing center.”
More youth centers
Aldine Youth Center’s director Sylvia Bolling wants to expand her vision of a family-healing community center into other areas of the Greater Houston area.
“Every low income community should start to have some of this center and it should be done by the people who live in the community,” she said. “The people who live closest to the problem are the best to solve it.”
Bolling encourages anyone interested in starting a youth center to call her at 281-449-4828, e-mail her at sbolling@aldineyouth.org or visit the website aldineyouth.org.
The process of bettering a community, Bolling said, is quickly erasing any notions that her youth center is just giving away food, services and much-needed direction for people in the area.
“You can’t change a life,” Bolling said inside the center’s main building at 4700 Aldine Mail Route. “But you can empower them to change their lives.”
For instance, when folks come in for food from its food pantry, they have to invest two hours of volunteer time in exchange for the food.
“You don’t come to just take,” Bolling said. “You come to share, that’s what really heals a community.”
Bolling has passed on her teaching and devoted ways to her daughter, Shawna Roy, who is the center’s director of operations.
“We want them to know that they are part of their own solution. In order to get a blessing you have to be your own blessing,” Roy said. “They help us, we help you; that’s the way a community center should be.”
And she explained that people who need food most likely need something else.
“Nobody needs one thing,” she said.
Roy pointed out that within a 2-mile radius on Aldine Mail Route there are 12 schools and five low-income apartment complexes.
The center started nearly two decades ago right in the neighborhoods it serves now, but without the buildings. Bolling began drug awareness programs, a mother-daughter forum, an after-school program and activities in the apartment complexes.
“We did what we could do with no money,” she said.
Then in 1995, they received the 6.8 acres the center is on now and it has become so much more over the last 13 years.
“The center’s value is that it’s accessible to low-income families who have trouble navigating the city to get the things they need to better themselves,” Bolling said.
And that’s a challenge in the poverty-filled neighborhoods they provide for.
“There’s no services, no programs in the area,” she said. “We’re trying to provide as many things out of this spot.”
To read more about the Aldine Youth Center and how to help, log onto www.thehumbleobserver.com.
There are around 30 programs at the center such as computer, exercise, GED, defensive driving and English as a second language classes, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, youth and family counseling, sports activities and job training.The center has a resale shop but it isn’t just a place to make money (“It pretty much covers our light bill,” Roy said.) or provide cheap clothing alternatives for local folks, rather it’s primarily for on-the-job training in conjunction with the center’s school of business for local teens.The kids in the program run through four areas: cashier, sorting and inventory, marketing and merchandising.The center rewards graduates of the program with a $100 stipend as they go out looking for a real job.“These kids are work ready,” said Mary Chong, an assistant in the business program who oversees the shop. “So far this year, we’ve had nine of our kids be employed out of this program.”Recently, though, Aldine Youth has been the victim of the crime that’s so rampant around the area.Thieves stole the batteries and the catalytic converters out of the vans and robbed and vandalized the resale shop. The center’s vans now sit at night in the driveways of staff members because of the problems they’ve had in the past.“It’s a huge hassle, headache and waste of time,” Roy said about having the vans off site. “We’re looking how to get a garage or a storage unit. If we want to keep serving the kids, we need those vans.”All the center’s copper wire was stolen in February and put it out of commission for two weeks. Luckily for them, an electrician donated his time and materials to get them back up and running.“If it wasn’t for his services, we’d still be in the dark for sure,” Roy said. “We don’t have those additional funds.”Bolling, who used to work for Aldine Independent School District, explained that poverty breeds crime in the area and “in order to impact crime we have to impact poverty.”And that all starts with the family, the part of the community that Aldine Youth Center is trying to impact the most. “The best thing you can do for a child is heal their family,” Bolling said. “What we thought was going to be just a youth program has become a family healing center.”
More youth centers
Aldine Youth Center’s director Sylvia Bolling wants to expand her vision of a family-healing community center into other areas of the Greater Houston area.
“Every low income community should start to have some of this center and it should be done by the people who live in the community,” she said. “The people who live closest to the problem are the best to solve it.”
Bolling encourages anyone interested in starting a youth center to call her at 281-449-4828, e-mail her at sbolling@aldineyouth.org or visit the website aldineyouth.org.
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