wfn.org | Urban-Ministry Programs Put the Glitter Back in Hollywood

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Note #5934 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

13-June-2000
00232

	Urban-Ministry Programs Put the Glitter Back in Hollywood

	Community House transforms a depressed area into a neighborhood

	by Evan Silverstein

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - Paramount Pictures, the only major movie studio that
hasn't yet bolted from the neighborhood beneath the familiar Hollywood sign,
still makes movies here, and the Hollywood name still calls to mind images
of movie stars, glamour and wealth.

	But just across the street from Paramount flickers the dim reality of
another Hollywood, a densely populated part of Tinseltown that society has
long forgotten. This 16-square-block neighborhood of Latino residents, just
a half-mile south of the fabled corner of Hollywood and Vine, serves up a
real-life script of drugs, gangs, prostitution and poverty.

	Snubbed because of inadequate education and poor language and vocational
skills, families of eight or more are crammed into tiny apartments. Parents
often work three jobs just to make the rent. Children go without breakfast.
Teenagers quit school.
	
	But there is hope amid the chaos, thanks to the Hollywood Urban Project
(HUP) - an independent non-profit corporation founded by the First
Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, and its City Dwellers program, a
young-adult volunteer internship program associated with the Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.).

       The common goal of City Dwellers and HUP is to improve the Hollywood
neighborhood by helping families take care of their needs, encouraging
home-grown leadership, and building partnerships between residents and
institutions that can help them.

	"Our desire and our vision is to partner with our neighbors in order to
call out one another's gifts - in order to build relationships (and)
understand more of what God is asking us to be," said Amy Gatje, a
24-year-old Presbyterian who interned as a City Dweller three years ago and
now works for the program as a community organizer.

	Gatje is one of five staff members working with five volunteer City Dweller
interns from around the nation, mostly in their 20s. Each intern spends a
year living in the Hollywood neighborhood networking with local families,
including Armenian, eastern European and Asian groups, inviting them to a
"Community House" to learn, pray and play.

	"That is the journey we are on," said Gatje, a Norfolk, Va., native. "We
are here because God has called us to share what we have. ... Sometimes we
have a role that gives us a lot of power. We're learning to share that
power, and to call out other people who have gifts and say ‘You can also be
a person in your community and share and create a more vital community
here."'
	
	 Freda Gardner, moderator of the 211th General Assembly of the PC(USA),
recently got a first-hand glimpse of how these kids-next-door embrace the
neighborhood and find life and healing.

	Gardner, accompanied by her vice-moderator, the Rev. Floyd Rhodes, and
staff members from the denomination's national offices, visited the
Community House and City Dwellers programs last month during a four-state
tour of Presbyterian-related mission and ministry in the Pacific Northwest
and southern California.
 
	"The gift is that we're on the journey together and we're discovering
things together," Gatje told the moderator's delegation. "It's really
beautiful to see how far some of these people have come."
	
	City Dwellers was established 12 years ago by First Church-Hollywood, which
owns the Community House. Since 1994, HUP and the City Dwellers have been a
young-adult-volunteer program site affiliated with the PC(USA)'s National
Volunteers office, which develops partnerships with church-related groups
and individuals, enabling Presbyterians and ecumenical partners to
contribute to the denomination's national mission through volunteer
ministry.

	 City Dwellers serves as a mission agency for the Hollywood church and five
other congregations that comprise the Hollywood-Wilshire cluster, formed in
the early 1990s to collaborate in urban ministry.

	Eight other PC(USA) young-adult-volunteer sites serve communities of need
within the lower United States: two others in California, one in Montana,
one in New York, one in Miami, one in Seattle, one in Cincinnati and one in
Cleveland, Ohio. Ten programs operate in Alaska, and there are several
international volunteer sites abroad.
  		
	City Dwellers live in apartments adjacent to the Community House and use
their community organizing skills to help residents obtain public services
and develop neighborhood leaders. The interns partner with residents to
provide youth programs: tutoring, Bible study, computer classes,
recreational opportunities and health services. There also are English and
computer classes for adults, as well as Bible study and parent-support
groups.

	There are soccer matches for children in the front yard of the unassuming
ranch-style Community House on Gregory Street, arts-and-crafts inside, and
special beach outings for neighborhood women.

          "It's kind of like a Big Brothers program," said the Rev. Dan
Hoffman, 33, a Presbyterian minister and the Dweller's director of
neighborhood ministry and discipleship. "I think it's the craze in a lot of
urban places, realizing that urban kids need an adult that will just invest
in them and love them and be committed to them."

	More than a decade of commitment to the Hollywood neighborhood has made a
difference, said one youth who stopped in to see the Dwellers during the
moderator's visit.

	Robin Rodriguez, 17, who lives about a mile away, said: "I felt a lot safer
with everybody here. It just felt great to come in and learn about Jesus
like that. They're my friends. I think it has made me change a lot."

	"In 1990 you wouldn't walk down El Centro Avenue," Hoffman, a one-time City
Dweller intern who became director four years ago, said of a major
thoroughfare. "It just wasn't safe. Every weekend we'd hear gunshots, and we
even witnessed a few of our kids dying, being shot, killed and paralyzed. It
was really a different neighborhood."

	"Now you can walk around this neighborhood," Hoffman said. "You can walk
down El Centro at night, and you can walk around here at night. ... It's
much safer, and there's not all those fears."

	Gatje said neighborhood residents are learning to work together and
beginning to appreciate the "beautiful community that is taking shape."

	For interns, the urban ministry program begins with three weeks of
orientation focusing on issues of urban life and possible solutions. City
Dwellers may participate in ongoing ministries, such as tutoring
schoolchildren or teaching English to adults. They are encouraged to develop
other types of ministries as they learn to discern how God is directing
them.

	"I came to Los Angeles thinking I had a good sense of who I was and my
place in the world and what God wanted from me," said Karen Kitsis, 22, who
graduated last year from Presbyterian-related Grove City College in Grove
City, Pa. "I've been kind of blown away by the reality of life here."

	Kitsis, a City Dweller since September 1999, helps with English classes for
a group of neighborhood women, Bible studies and the after-school program.

	"Personally, it's just been about realizing that there's so much more out
there then I have ever really experienced before, and making myself open to
that through relationships," said Kitsis, who like Gatje is from Norfolk,
Va.. "We go shopping together, we cook together, we take care of their
children and become a part of their lives."

	Computer classes are especially popular at the Community House, where 50
kids and five adults each week learn everything from how to turn the
computer on to using software that helps them learn English. Grants from
private foundations helped the Dwellers convert a plain classroom into a
modern computer room with six terminals.

	"The object of the room is to empower the community," said Robert Linthicum
Jr., 36, who oversees the computer lab. "The kids, they just enjoy it. It's
a way to keep them off the streets and out of trouble."

	Linthicum, who was raised in Chicago and Detroit, said the Community House
is making a difference, but said more work is needed.

	"I'd like to see this happening in more communities," he said. "I think
this is something that is really needed in inner cities across America -
Christian churches and communities getting together and saying ‘Hey, let's
do something about the gang problem,' ‘Let's do something about the drug
problem.' ... I know there's a lot out there, and there's a lot of stuff
being done. I think we can do more, though."

	In the meantime, volunteers like Gatje are pleased that they can help
improve the troubled neighborhood.

	"Just to see ... the growth," said Gatje. "That gives us hope for the
unseen things, because we don't know what's coming next. God is doing good
things in our midst. It's that kind of continuing journey. ... It will be
different tomorrow, but we're grateful for what God has done so far."

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