1996_10 Insight October 1996

              In Focus
OCTOBER 23, 1996 I
HOPE, from page 1
Stone Soup has worked closely
with the northwest POP team to
decrease crime in the neighborhood
and to provide children with
alternatives to gangs and crime.
Gary was one of Stone Soup's "at-
risk" children.
When Gary's parents first emigrated to the United States from
Laos in 1979. they lived in Minneapolis, where Gary and his younger
sister. Cozy, were bom.
When Gary was 9, the family
moved to Fresno, where several of
his aunts and uncles lived.
"Gary was on the edge. He was in
a little trouble, hanging out with Ihe
gangs," Garabed said.
Less peer pressure
"They told him to come every day
after school," Garabed said. "Soon
he became one of my best volunteers. He's here faithfully every day,
and any other time I call on him."
Gary said he still knows people
who are in gangs, but there is less
peer pressure from them for him to
join.
"I used to hang around with
them." he said, "but now, I guess I'm
just growing up."
Gary said his friends who are in
gangs are the ones who still have
family problems. "There is a
problem in this neighborhood with
gambling, cards and stuff," Gary
said.
"Parents would go out gambling
and so the kids come home from
school and there's no one there.
The longest game I ever heard of
lasted three days and two nights."
Garabed said that the main thing
Stone Soup has given the children of
the community is hope.
"We teach ihem that they need to
be leaders in their community,"
Garabed said.
She said Gary is the perfect
example of how good a child can do
if they are given positive alternatives.
Gary has helped Stone Soup with
many of its programs, including a
recent counter-measure to welfare
reform.
The term "welfare reform" is not
just a campaign slogan to Gary and
his neighbors. In Laos, Gary's
father was a high-ranking military
official.
Now he is unemployed.
Gary's family is one of the many
in the area receiving government
aid through the Aid to Families
With Dependent Children (AFDC)
program.
According to Don Peirce.
principal-analyst for the Fresno
County Department of Social
Services, the 93710 area code has
3,573 people receiving AFDC or
Medi-Cal.
Learning the language
That number is less than two
percent of the 175.371 people
receiving assistance in Fresno
County. "Now we are trying to help
more of our neighbors to become
citizens so the new welfare laws
vrbn't hurt them as much," Gary
said.
On Wednesdays, Gary, a sophomore at Hoover High School, is in
charge of Stone Soup's reading
program at the new community
center on the comer of Bulldog
Lane and Sixth Street. "In Minneapolis we lived in a white neighborhood, so I got to speak a lot of
English," Gary said.
"That made school easier. But
here it's different. The biggest
problem that trickles down into
other problems is the language," he
said.
The language problem carries
over into the children's education.
Reading program helps
"It makes it hard for the kids to
deal with school and it's also hard
to deal with their parents," Gary
said. "Kids are learning to write
English and speak it at school, but
at home their parents are speaking
their native language.
"The parents don't teach them
their native language, so they just
pick up bits and leam to use it.
Some kids arc pretty much stuck.
They're not good at any language."
Gary said his sister Cozy, 9,
doesn't speak English as well as he
does, but the Stone Soup reading
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program is helping her and others
like her.
"This program really does take
the place of the parents teaching
iheir kids to read," Gary said, "and
the parents like it very much
because most of them can't read   ^
their own language and-so they like
it when the kids leam to read."
Cultural barriers
"They're like any other parents,"
Gary said. "They'd kill themselves
for their kids to have a better
education. Education is very
important to them."
The language barrier also
prevents the residents of El Dorado
Park from communicating with the
people in control of their apart-
"It's the culture also," Gary said.
"The culture is very passive. They
don't complain about anything.
That's the reason Ihe apartments are
all run-down, because the parents
just don't know how to complain."
"In a white family," Gary said,
"the parents would participate in
the PTA. But here, the parents don't
know how to participate. They can't
even help their kids do their
homework."
Someone to trust
Gary said his parents speak
"pretty good English for their age."
He said they are often called
upon to help their neighbors read
the instructions on medication or to
translate welfare documents.
"When the kids are out playing,
they aren't there to help their
parents read 'hings like welfare
documents," Gary said.
The after-school reading program
is very popular among the
neighborhood's parents. Garabed's
program has helped not only the
children, but the entire community.
Gary said Garabed is Ihe reason
the El Dorado Park residents trust
Stone Soup.
"The neighborhood trusts and
respects Kathy and she understands
and respects the cultures in the
neighborhood," Gary said.
"It says a lot that they like Kathy
and trust their kids with her."
Sin City volunteers make
a difference in the community
by Julie Normart
Staff Writer
Tiny/ingers grasp black brushes
to paint brightly-colored illustrations of Southeast Asian homelands. Children huddle in intimate
groups of three, leaning against the
wood-paneled walls adorned with
life-size paintings of youngsters.
They delight in being read the classic fairy tales Cinderella and
Pinocchio.
Like the fairy tales that the children read in the spacious offices on
Sixth Street, this is a story of real-
life fairy godmothers and godfathers: Welcome to Stone Soup.
In the children's story, "Stone
Soup," three hungry soldiers combine the vegetables given to them
by wary villagers with stones to
create a bountiful meal.
The villagers leam from the soldiers that if everyone gives a little,
then everyone gets a lot
Stone Soup, a Fresno program
started in the summer of 1992, is a
a volunteer organization aimed at
helping the residents of El Dorado
Park, an area commonly known to
Fresno State students as "Sin City."
Dropping crime rate
The EI Dorado Park area has over
3,000 people living within it. Unfortunately, El Dorado Park also has
the highest number of impoverished
children in the state living in the two
and a half block area.
Located south of Barstow Avenue at the comer of Sixth Street
and Bulldog Lane, El Dorado Park
is home to many Hmong, Laotian
and Cambodian immigrant families.
Often, these families find it difficult to break through the language
and cultural barriers in order to become assimilated into American
life.
Kathy Garabed is the founder and
director of Stone Soup, helping
families adjust to a new way of life.
Before this grass roots organization began to flourish within the
half* photo by Ryan McKm
CSUF junior Lalane Lasala and
Ellen Bonnet (left) prepare for a
reading session at Stone Soup
community, crime and violence
plagued the area.
"The gangs in the neighborhood
were notorious for terrorizing the
residents of El Dorado Park," said
Problem Oriented Policing (POP)
officer Steve Coleman. 38. "The
Asian community came here and
started fresh.
"They were being victimized by
local gangs, landlords and other
people."
All that has changed, since Stone
Soup's participation with the Fresno
Police Department.
The crime rate has dropped by 53
percent since June of 1994. The POP
team was successful in cleaning out
the drug problem and arresting criminals.        I
Proven partnership
Garabed, a 52-year-old former
refugee resettlement officer, described Stone Soup as a "spaghetti
bowl."
The partners of Stone Soup include: Fresno State, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development, the city Neighborhood
Revitalization program, the Fresno
Police Department, local churches.
Fresno Unified as well as many other
organizations.
These groups donate everything
from furniture and money to medical and dental equipment to Ihe Stone
Soup Partnership.
Because most residents of EI
Dorado Park can't afford to see
doctors, Stone Soup opened a
health clinic two weeks ago to help
the children and families receive
necessary medical care.
"We have a high no-show rate because the adults are still unsure of
what we do," said Sharon
Templeton, a nurse practitioner
who helped to establish the clinic.
This summer, Fresno State nursing
students and volunteer interpreters
went door-to-door with Templeton
to educate families about medical
issues and safety precautions.
"Healthy Families was a program
designed to teach the families how
to use medicine, take temperatures
and incorporate sanitation into their
daily routines," Templeton said.
Award-winning organization
Several individuals from around
Fresno volunteer their time to read
to children, offer parenting skills
classes and summer youth programs while restoring the quality
of the neighborhood by installing
lights and speed bumps.
Students are included within this
group of dedicated volunteers.
"Fresno State students and high
school students have been the
bridge between the neighborhood
and Stone Soup," said the chair of
Stone Soup's executive board, Robert Kittredge, 68.
"The building of trust between us
and the residents has been essential in order for the program to
work," Kittredge said.
Kittredge, who is also a university liaison to Stone Soup as well
as a counselor emeritus at Fresno
State, has been a resident ofthe area
for 26 years.
Stone Soup was awarded the nationally renowned President's Service Award in April of this year.
This award is sponsored by the
Points of Light Foundation and Ihe
Corporation for National Service.
As Garabed says, "We are unique
because we started with the grass
roots initiative with people who
said, 'Enough is enough, we have
to do something.'"
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