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The Carver Promise
The Carver Promise
Nanette Bailey, Executive Director
1110 W. Leigh St.
Richmond, Va. 23231
804-355-0209
It has been almost 10 years since two young Richmond lawyers -- Fritz Kling and Scott Oostdyck -- concerned about the bleak future for urban youngsters in the city's battered inner city, met with Richmond University Vice President John Roush and proposed a bright, idealistic idea: Find a way to involve Richmond's college students as mentors to urban youngsters, intervening early enough in their school lives to guide them away from gangs and crime and toward higher education.
The idea quickly grew to incorporate all four of Richmond's colleges, a diverse group that includes Richmond U., a small, excellent college in the Baptist tradition; Virginia Commonwealth University, a large, public institution; J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, a two-year college; and Virginia Union University, a small, once segregated college that has graduated many leaders of Richmond's African-American community.
They focused their attention on George Washington Carver Elementary School in Gilpin Court, the city's poorest and most troubled public-housing project, where virtually every family is headed by a single parent and has an average income of well under $6,000. Perhaps most significantly, Director Nanette Bailey notes, only 5 percent of the adults in the community have completed high school, so exposure to higher education or a serious perception of its importance simply isn't part of the community culture. The Carver Promise seeks to change that by providing mentors and role models ... and friends.
With the enthusiastic support of Principal George Crockett, the colleges made this bold promise -- The Carver Promise -- to 150 Carver fourth-graders as school opened for the 1991 term:
Each college recruited mentors who were willing to make a commitment to work with a Carver student for three or four years. Each mentor is expected to give one hour per week at school to his or her charge, and to provide the child a "social outing" at least monthly, an event that may range from a picnic in the park to a visit to the zoo or a museum. Many mentors develop friendships with their youngsters and keep in touch through the summer vacation. The program recycles every three years as each mentored class moves on to the next level, middle school and high school, and each child gets a new mentor to replace the one who's graduating.
All this is administered at a simple, pragmatic and low-cost level through the Carver Promise, a low-budget non-profit with a staff of two, housed at the Carver school and working closely with counselors and chaplains at the four colleges.
The challenges involved in making this happen are probably obvious: Not every mentor will stick with the program for three to four years. Some lose interest, or don't finish college themselves. Not every match is made in heaven, and some pairs simply don't work out. And it's frankly a lot easier to persuade a college student to mentor a cute third-grader than it is to work with a teen-aged partner who may be wearing gang colors and packing drugs or a gun. But through the size and diversity of the four colleges,
The Carver Promise isn't an easy promise to make or to keep, but it has the potential to change the lives of hundreds of children in one of Richmond's poorest neighborhoods. It's also a potentially replicable national model for the involvement by local colleges in serious efforts to beat poverty in their own communities.
All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com. Send him E-mail. Back to the @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG Home Page
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