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 MIAMI _ In its nearly 40 years of existence in Liberty City,
the Belafonte Tacolcy Center has engaged future lawyers, doctors and
professionals in its myriad offerings for children – including a daycare
center, an after-school program for youth suspended from school, a leadership
development program and a family empowerment program.
Now, the center is poised to take on its largest and most
ambitious project ever, one that could help break the cycle of poverty in
Liberty City, and beyond.
On Friday, June 6, Gov. Charlie Crist is scheduled to visit
the neighborhood institution to sign The Magic City Children’s Zone into law.
The 10-year pilot program would transform the Tacolcy Center
into the headquarters of a new initiative that would organize efforts between
public and private social service agencies. The agencies would provide
educational programs for inner-city youth and their parents, including classes on child rearing. One of the program’s goals would be to increase graduation rates among the city’s at-risk
students.
The “out of the box” endeavor has boundaries that include
several diverse communities, including Little Haiti, the predominantly Hispanic
areas Allapattah and Wynwood; and the largely African-American Liberty City
community.
The Magic City Children’s Zone is modeled after the hugely
successful Harlem Children’s Zone in New York. That program is credited with
providing a full network of services to an economically struggling
neighborhood, including educational, social and medical services that continue from
birth all the way through college.
Belafonte Tacolcy Center CEO Alison Austin said the
initiative may impact the “brain drain” in Miami, a term that describes the
exodus of young adults who do not return after graduating from college.
“I have a whole generation of kids that were born and raised
in this community who have never seen a single project in this community that
could give them hope that there is a reason to stay here,” Austin said.
Many of them, she said, ask her, “What’s in Miami to come
back to?”
Sisterhood of
leadership
Today, The Magic City Children’s Zone (tentatively named
that way because the Harlem program has restricted the term “Children’s Zone’’
to that initiative) was born of what Austin called a synergy among community
leaders who surveyed the state of affairs in Liberty City and proclaimed, “This
is our town and our time, and if not now, when?”
“We had experience, we had education, but most of all we had
knowledge and passion about this community,” said Austin, who lives, works and
attends church in Liberty City.
Dissatisfied with the messages that children growing up in
the area received, Austin said what turned out to be “largely a sisterhood” of
leadership formed.
H. Leigh Toney, executive director of Miami Dade College’s
Entrepreneurial Center, began researching “programs that had similar dynamics
that were working. The one that rose to the top was the Harlem Children’s
Zone,” Austin
said.
Toney said MDC’s involvement will be patterned after other
high-performing colleges and universities across the country that reach out to
the community as early as possible.
“We used to have the mindset that said, ‘Let’s start
recruiting children for college in ninth grade – but really talking to kids
about college should begin in kindergarten,’” Toney said.
Austin said the determination to look at Liberty City from a
different perspective, coupled with a sermon preached by her then 17-year old
daughter, Imani, added to the synergy that allowed women such as Karen Moore of
the Urban Task Force; Marva Wiley, formerly of the Model City Trust; Austin and
Toney to create a holistic initiative in Miami that is aimed at serving youth
from birth to young adulthood.
Bill did not pass at
first
The Children’s Zone initiative was defeated here on its
first try last year, but found new life with strong support from then-state
House Speaker Marco Rubio, a Republican from West Miami.
On its second try, in the midst of massive budget cuts, the
2008 state Legislature approved the program, allocating $3.6 million for the
program’s first three years of operation, or $1.2 million per year.
Austin said one of
the initiative’s primary goals is to hire a development person who can help
parlay the seed money into the $25 million the zone will ultimately need each
year to fully serve the community.
Rubio was among a delegation of people – including state Rep.
Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall and County Commissioner Audrey Edmonson – who
visited the Harlem Children’s Zone last fall to get a firsthand account of what
the community-based, community-led, program accomplished.
The visit was “an amazing experience,” Austin said.
Bendross-Mindingall is credited with introducing Rubio to
her constituents in a series of meetings she called the ‘District 109 Plan.’
“What came from [the meetings] was a presentation that our
planning team created to present to Marco Rubio, [Eduardo Padron], the president
of Miami Dade College, the chairman of our board [Arthur Barnes] and other key
stakeholders in our community. That was our seed for what’s now being signed as
a bill,” Austin said.
Crist and Rubio were traveling and unavailable for comment.
Bendross-Mindingall did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pivotal sermon
Austin said her place of worship, The Church of the Open
Door, requires each of its high school seniors to deliver a sermon to the
congregation.
Her daughter and 15 of her daughter’s close friends
graduated in the top 25 percent of their class at Miami Northwestern Senior High Community School, and all
received college scholarships.
Austin said Imani’s sermon inspired her to pursue the
Children’s Zone.
The sermon topic? “I am something good coming out of Liberty
City.”
Imani, now 20, is a Howard University public relations
major who is slated to graduate next May.
She said she plans to work in another major metropolitan
city for six or seven years to hone her skills as a public relations
practitioner. Then, she said, she plans to return to Miami to help Liberty
City's “mom and pop’’ businesses grow and prosper.
“I tell my mom that all the time that there is nothing for
me in Liberty City,’’ Imani said. “She gets kind of upset about it
because she wants us to be able to come back to our community and
help build it up as she is doing. I have great respect for her for doing
that because in the few years that she's been at Tacolcy, I've already seen a change
in a lot of kids in Liberty City, having me...change my mind about wanting to
go back there."
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