Thursday, 4:30 PM
Boston Globe Foundation grant will fund 24 youth jobs
(Dominic Chavez/Globe Staff)
Adelina Fontes (center) and Ventura Dennis (right) are two of the 24 young adults whose youth outreach work this summer will be funded by a $130,000 grant from the Boston Globe Foundation.
By Emily A. Canal, Globe Correspondent, and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff
The Boston Globe Foundation announced a $130,000 grant today that will target a Dorchester neighborhood plagued by violence by providing summer jobs to 24 young people who will work as teaching assistants, youth outreach workers, and community organizers.
The grant, for young people 18 to 21 years old, will create a collaborative between four youth outreach programs in the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood. The 24 workers will meet at least once a week to coordinate their efforts and will organize at least one large outdoor event to celebrate the end of the summer.
Steve Ainsley, the Globe's publisher, told the grant recipients today at a press conference that after years of chronicling street violence each summer, it was time for the Globe to “do more than report on the problem.”
"The mayor has repeatedly for the better part of this year exhorted the business community to provide summer jobs," Ainsley said. "We are finally listening to him."
The grant will pay the youth workers $10 an hour for up to 25 hours a week of work. It will also fund an adult supervisor at each of the four outreach programs during the eight-week program. The four programs are Project: Think Different; The Teen Center at St. Peter’s; Social Capital Dorchester; and The Center for Teen Empowerment.
At Project: Think Different, the youth workers will produce a compact disc that will eschew the violence that pervades most hip-hop music. "We want to shift the perception of violence around using the media to popularize alternative action and more responsible action," said Scherazade King, the program’s executive director. They hope to "shift the personality of the city and make the once-glamorous violence no longer glamorous."
For The Teen Center at St. Peter’s, the grant will support English classes for new immigrants, computer courses, and soccer, flag football, basketball, and volleyball games at Ronan Park.
"It will keep teenagers off the streets," said Euclides Fontes, 19, who will work as a teaching assistant this summer. "There is a lot of violence in our community right now. We are trying to build up the community and make it better."
