U.S. After-School Programs Keep Kids Out of Trouble
By RAKEEB HOSSAIN
Hey, how are you doing?" was the question, from out of a crowd, in a strange land. I had just reached Washington, D.C., and was emerging from Immigration, looking for my luggage. This was my first visit to the United States and there was little chance that someone could know me here.
Surprised, I turned toward the voice. A middle-aged man, with a smile on his face, was standing in front of me. I was at my wits' end to figure how this man could know me. He turned out to be a member of the airport staff and helped me find the baggage section.
Little did I realize then that this was just a way of life in America, an example of how ordinary people try to solve their own little problems, collectively, with smiles on their faces.
This is the most important thing I learned during my one-month visit to the United States as part of the State Department's Youth Leadership Program. I came to realize that America as we know it from glossy magazines, television channels and Hollywood movies doesn't really exist. America has its own share of little problems. They range from school dropouts to underdeveloped neighborhoods, from drug addiction to religious differences, from lack of involvement by youths in political happenings in the country to students having nothing to do after they come home from school and often choosing the wrong way of life. But amid all these problems, the zeal to go on and strive for a better tomorrow comes out vehemently through some exemplary work of certain individuals and groups-what I call the American way of life-showing care and concern for every individual.
A visit to Harlem and the Bronx, among the poorest sections of New York City, takes you to an altogether different world-so close to the world's financial capital, yet so far from the fruits of Wall Street. In the Bronx, I came to know how even a small group of people can make a big difference to the place where they live. And I met a group of joyful youths who are changing the Bronx River from a dirty and shallow canal to a healthy part of the neighborhood. They showed us how a change in the local environment can actually lift the spirit of the entire neighborhood, so much so that a patch of bad road could be repaired by the residents themselves with their hard-earned money.
It was not a very big job, nor would it have made too much of a difference for the local administration in terms of revenue expenditure. But it would certainly make a difference in the lives of those handfuls of people who live there. I also saw the work being carried out by the Police Athletic League, the largest nonprofit independent youth organization in New York, changing the lives of 70,000 boys and girls in the city every year through 20 full-time youth centers with free recreational, educational, cultural and social programs. The whole idea behind the setting up of the organization 90 years ago was to keep the kids out of trouble on the streets by channeling their energies into recreational and athletic programs, explained Bobby Dunn, associate executive director of the Police Athletic League's Harlem Center.
Such organizations not only offer empowerment to the kids, but are solving a burning problem of America. For, unlike India and other developing countries, American school students have little to do once school hours are over. In many American families, both father and mother work. In others, there may be only one parent in the picture, who must work two jobs to make ends meet. In other cases, the parents may be on drugs, ill or otherwise incapable of providing care and monitoring for their children. These institutions give students a place to go after school, rather than to an empty or dangerous home, where they can engage in constructive activities such as studies, games, painting or music. And I believe, with rapid urbanization, nuclear families and working parents, it's time Indian teenagers get this kind of after-school care, sooner rather than later.
A little compassion, a little personalized effort, not waiting for the help to come from somewhere else but coming forward with it-that's what is making things work in U.S. society. And some simple words, as simple as, "How are you doing?" from a common man to a stranger, speaks for the society itself-a society that truly cares, even for strangers.
Rakeeb Hossain is principal correspondent of the Hindustan Times in Calcutta.
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