David Tyree Spends Afternoon with Children of the City

As you know, I serve on the Board of a Brooklyn-based charity, Children of the City and often write about this charity, education and our youth in my website, www.roccobasile.net, and this blog. The New York Giants' football star David Tyree is also on the Board, and he recently visited the kids during one of the Create Success program classes, which is an after school and/or summer program for kids. It's the only multi-service educational program of its kind and is fast becoming a model sought after by other agencies for their own after school program sites.

The program places priority on each student’s academic success with intense tutoring and help with their homework, which ends up being a connection with the student allows us the open door to provide them with other services such as counseling, or advocacy within the social systems like court. Some of the skills that the program achieves include:
Our goals are:

- Closing the academic skills gap;

- Displacing the poverty mentality;

- Providing the support and resources needed to help each child and youth complete their education so they can enter the workforce;

- Addressing social issues that discourage a child from focusing on their education.

The Create Success program also evaluates student performance using NYC Department of Education assessment tools which sowed that over the past three years 95 percent of the students tested improved several DRA levels; 20 percent increased an entire grade level; and all of the students expressed they felt more comfortable reading, more confident in their math skills.

In general this program helped the Children of the City kids develop positive outlooks for the success of their education and lives.

-- Rocco Basile







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Children of the City's Mission

The mission for Sunset Park-based Children of the City, located in Brooklyn New York has remained the same since 1981. They try to reach at-risk inner-city youth and their families. Children of the City's goal is to connect families to resources to address their current crises in an effort to change the culture of poverty.

One of their programs, Strong Minds and Strong Homes, is a volunteer-based outreach effort that meets children and families where they live. Strong Minds - Strong Homes (SMASH) is a volunteer-based effort that meets children and families in Sunset Park and connects them with services they might not otherwise seek out on their own.

The goals of this program include:

1) Building a healthy community - by increasing connections between community members and service providers.
2) Empowering parents to meet basic physical needs of their children - by connecting them to food pantries, employment services, clothing providers, and other social service groups.
3) Equipping parents to raise healthy children - by helping to train and support them to use healthy developmental strategies to raise their children. This helps reduce neglect and child abuse.
4) Increasing educational opportunities for children - by advocating at local schools and connecting them with supplemental academic programs.

I also have other information about this and other programs that Children of the City sponsors on my educational website www.roccobasile.net.

Children of the City also believes in the importance of mobilizing its community members to work together for the good of everyone in the neighborhood. Each year the organization trains 50 volunteers from the Sunset Park community. Each person commits to giving 10 hours every month conducting outreach for children and families, over 12 consecutive months.

I do it and it is the best feeling in the world to give back to a community.

-- Rocco Basile