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With generous funding from the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies, two professors with the Center for Children and Childhood Studies at Rutgers–Camden are working to strengthen communities and the lives of youths in the city. Bill Whitlow, a professor of psychology, is working with the Camden Area Health Education Center to help residents address issues involving air and water quality in their neighborhood. Dan Hart, director of the Center for Children and Childhood Studies and a professor of psychology, is working with two Camden groups to address youth development and health care.
source: http://rujnjpartnership.rutgers.edu/index.shtml#item1
Less than a year ago, 9-year-old Alex Checo came home from a school field trip clutching a small tomato plant.
“He was so excited,” said his mother Martha Checo. “He said “Mom, let’s go. We have to plant it.’ “
Checo didn’t share her son’s excitement.
“At my house, we don’t have the space to grow a garden,” she said.
She did it anyway, setting the plant down in the small patch of dirt at their Cramer Hill home.
“We had so many tomatoes, if you came in and took a couple, we wouldn’t even notice,” said Alex, a student at the St. Anthony of Padua School.
Although the family’s garden is still small, they now have room to grow as many vegetables as they would like.
The Checos were among the first families to sign up for their own plot at a new community garden in a city-owned lot on the corner of 29th Street and River Road, across from Von Neida Park.
“We’re going to have more throughout the city,” said City Council President Angel Fuentes during Saturday’s groundbreaking ceremony. “This is just the beginning.”
The garden, one of about 20 sprinkled throughout the city, is the result of a partnership between the city, a group of local churches and the Camden Children’s Garden.
About half of the community gardens in Camden are on city-owned properties, said Children’s Garden Director Mike Devlin. The other half belongs to faith-based organizations, he said.
“This is a good partnership with the churches,” Fuentes said. “Imagine if each church could select an empty lot near them and beautify it. I think it would make a huge difference in the city.”
The lot in Cramer Hill is among the 5,000 to 10,000 abandoned properties in Camden.
For the past five years, the lot was a neighborhood blight.
Trailers that served as a police substation from 1994 to 2002 still sat there, abandoned.
“We put up the trailers and within a couple of days, folks came here and firebombed it,” Fuentes said, blaming the damage on drug dealers who sold their wares on the corner of 28th and Heyes streets. When the city restructured its police department the trailers were no longer needed.
Tired of seeing the abandoned structures, four Cramer Hill churches belonging to a group called Camden Churches Organized for People decided to do something about it.
“We got together with the Children’s Garden and asked: “What can we do with this site?’ ” said Mandi Aviles, director of youth ministries at St. Anthony.
With the help of a group from Volunteers of America, the staff at the Children’s Garden prepared the first nine plots to be planted then used part of a $250,000 Robert Wood Johnson grant to supply seeds and plants. Those who participate in the program have to sign an agreement with St. Anthony and the Cramer Hill community garden committee to take care of the land.
“The first step is to get the gardens going,” Devlin said.
On Saturday, volunteers were busy planting the more than 500 plants and seeds bought with grant money.
With a little help getting started, neighbors usually stick with it, Devlin said.
“Gardening is popular in every culture,” Devlin said. “It’s as popular in Haddonfield as it is in Camden.”
And the demand is growing.
There are more community gardens popping up this year than any other previous year, Devlin said.
So many, in fact, that Camden County ran out of the wood chips it has provided free of change for many years. The wood chips are used to divide the plots.
“We used them all up,” Devlin said.
Membership in the Children’s Garden club has climbed to include more than 70 families and 30 nonprofits. For their $25 to $60 annual dues, members have access to free plants, seeds, fertilizers, fencing and other planting materials.
The National Gardening Association estimates that 9 million more households will be gardening this year, a 19 percent increase from last year.
For the residents planting the gardens, the benefits outweigh the amount of produce they can harvest.
“I think it’s going to restore a lot of the hope that was lost here,” Aviles said. “We see so much negative that we forget that there are things that we can do that are positive if we just get together and do them.” Reach Lavinia DeCastro at (856) 486-2652 or ldecastro@courierpostonline.com
Five years ago, dozens of Cramer Hill residents marched to City Hall, outraged by a $1.2 billion redevelopment plan that would have forced the relocation of more than a thousand families to make way for new homes, retail space, a golf course and a marina.
The 2003 plan became defunct three years later when a judge ruled that the city had made procedural errors during the approval process. But distrust and resentment lingered over what had almost happened.
Now, community leaders have come back with a new plan to revitalize the Cramer Hill neighborhood — without eminent domain.
State officials, city leaders and residents gathered Monday in Von Neida Park to celebrate the unveiling of the nearly 200-page document. The “Cramer Hill Now!” plan calls for a cleaner and safer community, street improvements, more than 375,000 square feet of commercial development, 3,053 residential units and a multifaceted waterfront park over the next two decades. All this is expected to create thousands of jobs and generate more than $9 million in annual tax revenues.
So far, nobody has staged a protest. Nobody has plastered stickers warning developers to stay away, like they did after the Cherokee Investment Partners plan. Nobody had anything but good things to say on Monday.
Community leaders said that’s because residents were involved in the planning process. Since last September, more than 500 residents gave the nonprofit Cramer Hill Community Development Corp. input about the changes they wanted to see in their neighborhood.
“This is something that came up in every meeting, that we need to address the concerns of residents in the neighborhood now,” said executive director Manny Delgado.
A committee of residents, city officials, the Camden Redevelopment Agency and business owners sorted through feedback from the various community meetings. Professional planning consultants, hired with an $85,000 Wachovia Regional Foundation planning grant and $50,000 state grant, analyzed demographics, past development plans and resident surveys.
The ambitious plan they drafted includes improvements to existing businesses, demolition of 57 abandoned homes, mixed-income development, better street lighting, a public library and more home improvement grants.
It also recommends initiatives to improve quality of life such as installing public trash cans, painting murals, taking charge of vacant lots and organizing street clean-up brigades.
An accompanying waterfront study led by the Cooper’s Ferry Development Association calls for parks, sports fields, picnic areas, greenway trails and conservation space along the 2.5 miles of waterfront that outline the neighborhood from the Cooper River to the Delaware River Back Channel. As with the Cherokee plan, there would be a marina and golf, only mini-golf instead of an 18-hole course.
Officials said they’ll use the plan as a tool to get the funding they need to turn their dreams into reality.
“It’s a huge competitive edge for development opportunities,” said Sandy Johnston, director of the Camden Redevelopment Agency.
A few components of the plan are already in the works. The N.J. Department of Environmental Protection is cleaning up a former landfill site on Harrison Avenue that will eventually become a 120,000 square-foot Salvation Army community center. Work to ease flooding issues at Von Neida Park will begin next spring with $1.4 million in grants, Delgado said. His organization also continues to seek grants to build infill homes.
City Council President Angel Fuentes, also a Cramer Hill resident, said he expects council to adopt the “Cramer Hill Now!” plan this summer in conjunction with the city’s official redevelopment plan for the neighborhood, which was started in 2006 but stalled until last year.
“We’ve learned a good lesson: We have to consider people are first,” said Mayor Gwendolyn Faison. “Be encouraged, Cramer Hill. We might have messed up, but you know what, we don’t go away mad. I believe this is going to be the most envious section of the town because there’s so many possibilities.”
Reach Deborah Hirsch at (856) 486-2476 or dhirsch@camden.gannett.com
By LAVINIA DeCASTRO
Courier-Post Staff
The staff at Urban Promise thanks the college students who spend spring break at the nonprofit’s campus on the Camden-Pennsauken border with a barbecue under a banner that reads “I could have gone to Cancun, but God called to Camden instead.”
The nonprofit has made good use of the banner this spring, when Urban Promise hosted more than 200 college students from 18 different schools.
“These are students that, perhaps a lot of their classmates are off to Cancun or Florida to unwind from their studies, but they choose to be here,” said Jim Cummings, Urban Promise’s work group director.
Camden is becoming a spring break destination for students who want to use the time off to help those less fortunate in a city known for a high crime rate and poverty.
“This little city of 80,000 people has a reputation that goes far and wide,” Cummings said.
Last week, Urban Promise had a group of 16 students from two different colleges, the smallest groups of volunteers this spring.
“They come from all over the United States and Canada,” Cummings said. The students spend their time helping maintain the Rudderow Street campus, which houses an elementary school, a high school and several programs after school that serve a combined 500 children.
“It’s the only way that we can do what we do,” Cummings said. “If we were to pay them, even at minimum wage, we’re looking at thousands of dollars.”
Those are dollars the nonprofit uses to run five after-school programs throughout the city.
“For me, it’s really relevant to faith and what I believe in,” said 24-year-old Jason Murray, the campus minister at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va.. “It’s far more meaningful than going to the beach.”
Murray and 20-year-old Nick Palladino, a student at the college, helped renovate the nonprofit Ray Scull Memorial Home, which will house offices and an art studio. They could have done the same type of work in Biloxi, Miss., helping to rebuild areas destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
“I chose to come here because the vision that Urban Promise has, I think, is very compelling,” Murray said. “This is so different than what I’ve ever experienced in a city,” added Palladino.
Some college volunteers returned after graduation to become part of the staff and others have taken the Urban Promise model to Delaware, Toronto, Vancouver, Honduras and Malawi.
Kent Monma, 17, a native of New Zealand and an international student at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, traded traveling for volunteering.
“I thought the people of Camden needed me more than I needed to travel,” Monma said. Kelly Conner, 18, spent time helping the teachers at Urban Promise’s Camden Forward School.
The religion studies and Spanish major learned as much from the students as they learned from her.
“I’m really glad I came,” the Randolph-Macon student said.
“I really had no idea what to expect,” she said. “I’m from a small town and Camden is a neighborhood that I’m not used to. I’ve learned that good things can come from an area like Camden. These are wonderful kids, wonderful people. Camden is not such a bad place if there are people like this.”
Reach Lavinia DeCastro at (856) 486-2652 or ldecastro@courierpostonline.com
Camden, New Jersey, March 2009 –
Instead of fleeing the dorms, cafeteria food, and schoolwork, eighteen college groups are headed to Camden, NJ to do a different kind of work with UrbanPromise Ministries. From Malibu, CA, to Williamsburg, VA, universities including: Pepperdine University, The College of William and Mary, Bowdoin University, and the University of New England, among others. Over two hundred and twenty students of various backgrounds occupied with all fields of study are coming together over the next six weeks with at least one thing in common; an urge to get involved with service at the grassroots of America—the children being raised amongst some of our countries most dire issues.
UrbanPromise has a clear mission, to build a city of promise, one child at a time. By equipping Camden’s children and young adults with the skills necessary for academic achievement and moreover, life management, UrbanPromise has grown from a tiny summer camp program to a multifaceted institution with a reputation of solidarity and success. Among their many programs are private schools for all ages, after school programs, summer camps, and various other recreational and educational programs, each targeting different parts of the lives of Camden’s youth. College students will have the opportunity to help with and learn about programs in each category.
Students in “Workgroups” will be engaged in a variety of work projects during their week stay in Camden including: maintenance projects on the UrbanPromise campus, tearing out the old floor of a building under renovation, and re-painting busses, to name a few. Oddjobs have piled up over the winter and the staff and youth of UrbanPromise are happy to have a wave of excited and energetic college students to give a hand.
A student reflecting on her time working on a run-down UrbanPromise house “felt like she was actually doing something for Urban[Promise].” Anna, nineteen, from Pepperdine University went on to say, “While I’ve had the opportunity to volunteer at many other non-profit organizations, I’ve never been involved with the real, nitty-gritty grunt work before…it’s been really rewarding so far.”
After children enrolled in UrbanPromise’s many school programs are dismissed to afterschool programs, the workgroups get to jump in and interact with UrbanPromise’s most treasured resource—the children of Camden. Many children stay all the way until six in the evening, giving the students many chances to help out with homework, tutoring, or simply just playing around with the kids. According to Brent Liebman, UrbanPromise Intern Director, between three and six PM are the most dangerous hours for a young person to be left alone in Camden. “WorkGroups are great not only to lend a much needed hand to the staff, but the kids love them.” Andy Joshua, director of AfterSchool Programs went on to say, “Our youth have the opportunity to get to know university students from all across the country…it’s a great way to get kids excited about college!”
At first, Prarna, twenty, from The College of William and Mary, assigned to Ms. Thomas’ “Aftercare” program was skeptical about how much of a difference her presence would actually make to kids whose situations were so unlike her own. “Coming from an affluent area I doubted my skills would be adequate to deal with some of the hardest issues these kids face. I was struck, though, by how quick the kids responded to me and how friendly and open they were after hanging out for only an hour.”
Ms. Thomas noticed it too, and commented that “they want a lot of attention, some of them need it, and don’t have many other places to get it.”
As university students learn about Camden and its people, they will be better able to help. For now, though, their kindness and attention, as explained by Jim Cummings, Director of Work Groups, “is the work of super-heroes.”
CONTACT: Shannon Oberg, Marketing Coordinator UrbanPromise Ministries
(609) 876-9958 www.urbanpromiseusa.org
soberg@urbanpromiseusa.org
This short documentary video is about some of the positive work going on in Camden. The film features UrbanPromise, an organization that helps Camden kids and teens develop academic, leadership, spiritual growth and life management skills through alternative schools, summer camps, job training initiatives and other programs. UrbanPromise also is committed to involving local teens in tutoring and mentoring younger children in the community.
Video created by Jamie Moffett Media Design & Production.
