4-H Club in Gang Area Blossoms in Adversity

There used to be a clubhouse near the corner of D Street and Hawaiian Avenue in Wilmington. Well, almost a clubhouse. It was close to being finished when it was pulled to pieces by those who didn’t know, or didn’t care, how hard the youngsters at the 4-H Club had worked to build it.

No matter. The youngsters at this 4-H are tough. They have to be. Because living anywhere near D Street and Hawaiian means living near Dana Strand Village, a housing project so rough that even the police were shot at there a few weeks ago.

So when the wooden framing of the clubhouse was pulled down, the shell destroyed just as the roof was going up, the youngsters at Dana Strand’s 4-H took what was left of the wood and put it aside. Forget about the clubhouse, they agreed. Let’s use the wooden foundation for a stage.

Sometime later this year, they’ll use that stage for their first play. And just as in everything else they do at the 4-H Club, they will have fun.

They deserve it.

For the past three years, about 20 children a day, sometimes as many as 40, have come to the 4-H Club at Dana Strand, painting, gardening, cooking, learning. They’ve come to get away from the streets, away from the drugs and the gangs and the things that make being a child in this part of Wilmington harder than most adults could imagine.

“You get to talk to people and have fun,” is how Gabriel Hernandez, a handsome 10-year-old, explains it.

Fun is something Hernandez needed the other day. Dressed in a charcoal-gray suit, he had just returned from the funeral of his 22-year-old uncle.

“That happens a lot around here,” says John Pusey, the 4-H adviser who oversees the Dana Strand program. “It’s a hard environment.”

Over the years, Pusey says, the youngsters have explained how hard that environment can be. One saw his father shot and killed by a gangbanger. Another lost a baby brother in a car accident at the project. And all of the children, who range from 8 to 13 years old, have been intimidated by the gangs, witness to drug deals, victims in one way or another of the poverty that is a part of Dana Strand.

But as Pusey knows, and as this 4-H program proves, it doesn’t take a lot of money to show youngsters a good time. All it takes, he says, are people like Rachel Kahn.

Kahn, a cheery teacher’s aide at Hawaiian Avenue Elementary School, coordinates the 4-H program at Dana Strand. From Tuesday to Friday, 2 to 6 p.m., she and an assortment of volunteers, including her two daughters, turn a stark city Housing Authority building into a giant rumpus room for the children.

There, the first order of business is usually help with homework--something that some of the parents have neither the time nor the education to provide. “A lot of these parents are struggling,” Kahn says. “Some have never graduated from high school. Some have never even been to school. So if a child has homework, who’s there at home to help?”

Though traditional schooling is an integral part of the program, it is only part of it. Each day, when the homework is done, Kahn and the other volunteers teach the children new skills. From working with a computer to planting vegetable gardens to sewing, carpentry, baking and the rest, the children learn about things that many schools do not have the facilities or staff to offer.

“I like to be here because I like the computer and the art,” Alicia Toves, a 9-year-old, says as she roughhouses with a few friends on the lawn.

This day, Toves and the others are deciding what to name a tiny white kitten that the group has adopted. “Candy,” she shouts, when asked her choice for a name.

Chris Perez, shy and almost too serious for a 10-year-old, agrees with the choice. “Candy,” he says, flatly.

But Hernandez, the 10-year-old dressed in charcoal gray, suggests another name. “Michaelangelo,” he says, referring to one of the cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The kitten is the latest addition to a small collection of pets at the 4-H, a program best known and long associated nationwide with agriculture and farm animals. At Dana Strand, there are no sheep or goats or roosters. But they do have a rabbit named Snowball, a 4-foot python named Merlin and a dove that no one has gotten around to naming.

“They love the animals,” Kahn says.

They also love gardening, she says, pointing to a long garden of radishes, squash and marigolds being watered and weeded by several young girls. “They grew everything themselves,” Kahn says.

Inside the 4-H office, with two large classrooms and a kitchen, Rosa Barragan is cutting out tiny patterns for dolls that she and her eldest daughter, Tita, 16, will make for the children. Barragan is one of the mothers who help out at 4-H, where all of her five children spend many afternoons.

“This program is a great thing,” she says, handing a cloth pattern to her daughter. “It keeps the children off the streets.”

And that, she and others say, is the most important benefit of the program.

“We’re always preaching about staying away from drugs, staying away from gangs. But too often we’re not providing anything away from the drugs and the gangs,” says Kahn, who worked as a Project Head Start teacher and at private school nurseries before joining Hawaiian Avenue school.

“Children are children. I don’t care what environment they come from,” she says. “They just need the chance to explore and do the things that they may not have the chance, or the money, to do at home.”

Anthony Donato, 17, is one of those who seemed to lack choices. “The first year it was here, I didn’t want to come. And then I started getting into trouble,” Donato says.

After an arrest for possession of cocaine, Donato says, he began to realize how hard his life could become if he didn’t make changes. “I decided I didn’t want to be around that kind of environment anymore,” he says. “So Rachel said to me, ‘Why not come here?’ ” to 4-H.

Now, two years later, Donato spends his afternoons as a 4-H volunteer working with children much younger than himself but headed, hopefully, in the same direction. “Here, you’re not out there running around and doing bad things. Here, you’re with people you can talk to, people who care,” Donato says.

By today’s standards, the cost of that care is minimal. The program’s budget, for a year-round schedule of after-school events and field trips, is $15,000, according to 4-H adviser Pusey. The money, he says, comes from a grant provided by the city’s Community Development Department.

Just recently, he adds, the Dana Strand program received a $6,650 grant from the Arco Foundation. The money will go toward expanding the 4-H program with new activities, including dance, drama, photography and music classes taught by students from local colleges and universities.

Among those who will be teaching those classes are Kahn’s two daughters, both graduates of 4-H who are now students at Harbor College. In the coming months, Marcela, 21, will begin a photography class, while her sister, Michaela, 20, will produce some plays with the children, plays they will write and perform.

So it is a good time at Dana Strand’s 4-H, Kahn says. “There are still some days when it gets a little depressing. There are times when it is hard,” she says, thinking about the environment the children must overcome day after day.

“But we have a lot of good days too,” she says.

As she walks out onto the front steps of the 4-H offices, one of the children, Lynne Van Bibber, runs up, proudly displaying a cardboard sign that reads: “Reach for the Stars.”

In one corner of the sign, the freckle-faced 11-year-old has painted a heart with the words, “I love the 4-H.”

Kahn looks at the sign, gives the girl an approving nod and then turns to acknowledge another child.

“The important thing,” she says a moment later, “is that people know we are here, that we are here for the children.”

“I tell the kids that this is their home,” Kahn says.

Just then, just like at home, a radio is turned on and one of the children switches the dial to a station playing rap music. As the sound is turned up, Kahn shakes her head.

“The only thing I don’t like is that darn rapping,” she says, laughing. “But I sneak in some Chopin or Pete Seeger once in awhile.”