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Across the James River from downtown Richmond, Virginia, looms one of the poorest and most violent neighborhoods in the country. Residents of the Bainbridge-Blackwell neighborhood know more than anyone should of poverty, violence, drugs, and unemployment. Fewer than a quarter of those over 25 have a high school education; 60 percent earn incomes below the poverty level; 65 percent of the families are headed by a single parent, nearly always a woman. Many of the neighborhood men have been in jail, are in jail, or face trials. The women raise not only their own children but also frequently those of relatives, neighbors, or friends. Domestic violence threatens nearly all the women, and the effects of drug and alcohol abuse threaten just about everyone. There are guns in nearly every one of the housing projects, which go on for miles and miles. In one particular week in Bainbridge-Blackwell, thirteen people were shot. Recent welfare reform legislation is only going to increase these problems and the number of people directly affected by them. One public-health official maintains that virtually everyone in the neighborhood suffers from posttraumatic stress syndrome. In such a pessimistic setting, people do not believe that they have long to live, so they tend to spend extravagantly what little money they have on clothing and cars they do not need, the same behavior sometimes seen in terminally ill patients who spend money outrageously to enjoy the time they have left. | |
Donna Vick, lead teacher of the Family Resource Program at the Jesuits' Sacred Heart Center in Richmond, Virginia, has other duties as well: driving the center's grade schoolers home in the afternoon. In the midst of this neighborhood stands an amazing community center. Sacred Heart Center, founded by the Jesuits in 1990 in a former grade school, resembles the Jesuit missions of Paraguay, the reductions, made famous in the film The Mission. The Sacred Heart Center, a modern-day mission serving hundreds of mothers and children, is a witness to the daily struggles of the poor, the struggle to find hope in the midst of despair, love in a world of indifference, and life in the midst of death. Its mission is simple: to lend hope and strength to the vulnerable of the neighborhood, and it does that on a daily basis. | |
Women from the neighborhood make up one third of the Sacred Heart Center's staff. The center's health, day care, education, and recreation programs offer the children and parents of a poor and dangerous neighborhood a vital commodity: hope. With over 30 people on staff (a third of them low-income, African-American women from the neighborhood), the Sacred Heart Center offers licensed day care, after-school, and summer programs for children; a family literacy program (with academic training and parenting skills for women); a program for teens; jobs for residents; emergency fuel and food assistance; kindergarten, first-, and second-grade classes for at-risk children; parent support groups; a health program; and a recreation program for over 250 men. In addition to this ambitious list of services, the center also hosts various communitywide events and activities. The center's doors open at 6:30 in the morning, when the 50 day-care children start arriving. A little while later, Barbara Walker, a former public school principal and early childhood education coordinator, welcomes the kindergarten, first-grade, and second-grade students, who receive intensive, personal attention from the center's teachers. Two hours later, the twenty women and their children of the family literacy program arrive to spend the day studying with Sandra Kemp, the adult education teacher, along with one of two Jesuit Volunteers. The women spend mornings studying for the high school equivalency exam and sharing time with their children to improve family life, parenting skills, and the bonds of family love. Since 1991, over 75 families have been served by the family literacy program with literacy and academic training, counseling, and parenting support. | |
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At 3:00 in the afternoon, buses pick up 100 kids, ages five to twelve, at their various schools. Instead of wandering through the projects, where they could possibly get into trouble, they are brought to the center for an after-school program that includes tutoring, snacks, sports, boys and girls clubs, Boy and Girl Scouts, teen clubs, and sports clubs.  Rock stars Bruce Hornsby and Jackson Browne performed to a sold-out 3,600-seat auditorium last October at a fund-raiser for the center. The strong support it receives from volunteers, benefactors, and corporate sponsors helps the center keep its doors open to those in need. Cliff Lawson, the adolescents' coordinator, drives a van of teens to afternoon jobs or a movie or a ball game. Herman Melton hosts the evening and weekend basketball program, which draws 50 to 100 men for daily tournaments. Andrea Cason, the school-age child- care coordinator, stands in the new playground surrounded by 100 children, playing with them, encouraging them, and dreaming up the next day's adventure: Maybe a cookout? A party? A bowling tournament? Perhaps a trip to the park? Her imagination is at the service of the center's children. The center bustles with such activities every day, whether meals, youth groups, basketball games, parties, dances, aerobics, ballet, nonviolent conflict resolution programs, workshops, parents' meetings, videos, art, music, sports, classes, or field trips. There are, of course, the inevitable crises: a bus breaks down or an air conditioner quits or a toilet overflows. But through the energy and commitment of staff, friends, volunteers, and people of the neighborhood itself, the center, though in a city where Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other Confederate leaders are honored, daily fulfills its mission of offering hope to the hundreds of children and mothers from the neighborhood who continue the struggle of life.  Richmond native Jeanine Harper, Sacred Heart Center's executive director, manages a staff of over 30 full-timers and volunteers, including two Jesuit Volunteer Corps members. One example is the family of Melvin Jones, a neighborhood father of six children and friend of the center, who dropped dead of a heart attack at age 35. His whole family had been spending every day at the center's family resource, day-care, or after-school programs. When he died, the center joined together to support his wife, Nita, and the children. The funeral was held at a Baptist church. At the cemetery on that hot Saturday afternoon, Nita broke down. She had no money, six hurting kids, and no support -- except from Sacred Heart. Shortly after the funeral, staff members took Nita and her children -- Lateshia, Rodney, DeAngelo, DeAndre, Tevon, and Melina -- to a park for the day. They took along food and drinks for a picnic, went for walks, and swam in the pool -- a brief respite from the sweltering heat and tension of the projects. DeAngelo, age ten, said it was the best day of his life. Death is a daily reality in Bainbridge-Blackwell. "Did you know the 13-year-old girl found dead on Saturday morning in the crack house?" asks a mother in one of the center's vans. "The morgue called me today to ask if I would come down and identify a body they thought might be my sister-in-law," another says. But in such everyday conversation about death and violence in Bainbridge-Blackwell, the center's presence injects a note of hope. "I feel so much support," one mother remarks. "I'm learning so much about parenting my four kids. I just know I'm going to make it because of the center. It gives me hope for the future of my family." The center's work is difficult, the needs are great, the struggles appear overwhelming, yet hearing these women talk about the center is a source of hope for everyone involved in its mission. Places like Sacred Heart hold out the possibility of hope because they offer the possibility of life. They confront violence, racism, and poverty by offering a safe place where despairing people can learn not just to cope but also to rebuild their lives. The gospel calls us to stand with the poor, to walk with them, and to share our lives with them. As we stand with the marginalized, we meet Christ in Kendrick, a fetal-alcohol syndrome child, small in stature but with a personality larger than life, who enjoys new friends in the after-school program. We meet Christ in Pearl, an adult in the family literacy class, who rejoices at the discovery of complemental and supplemental angles in geometry. We meet Christ in the father of one of our day-care children who thanks us with tears in his eyes for offering free day care, which enables him to work to support his children and his mentally disabled wife. The center makes a difference, one child at a time, one person at a time, one day at a time. | |
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