Volunteers come out for new tutoring program

Jennifer Kho

WESTSIDE -- About 40 volunteers signed up last week to serve a helping

of education to youngsters at the Someone Cares Soup Kitchen.

“I really want to help,” said Krissy Raiger, a 15-year-old volunteer

who attended the Someone Cares Soup Kitchen’s Tutoring Program volunteer

orientation Thursday. “I just really want to make a difference in

people’s lives. I really want to give.” The kitchen and Think Together,

which oversees the Shalimar Learning Center, are collaborating to open a

new learning center at the kitchen Feb. 26.

The new center was going to be called the Someone Cares Learning

Center but has been renamed the Soup Kitchen’s Tutoring Program.

Shalimar provides tutoring and academic help for Westside students in

first through 12th grades, and the Someone Cares Learning Center will

follow the same routine, said Laura Johnson, executive director of

Shalimar.

“We’re going to be helping the kids with their homework, and we will

have an arts day and a cultural day with music or painting,” said

Johnson, who will also be the executive director of the new learning

center. “We will pattern that after Shalimar. The only difference will be

the fact that the kids are going to be fed at the soup kitchen.”

The soup kitchen plans to greet the children with a snack when they

arrive after school and to send them off with a sack meal to take with

them when their homework is done, she said.

Merle Hatleberg, founder of the soup kitchen, said she thinks the two

organizations will work well together to help reach children on the north

side of 18th Street.

“The kids that can’t get to the Shalimar Learning Center will have a

very easy time to get here,” she said. “The main reason we have so many

people that come to the soup kitchen to eat is because of a lack of

education. If we can educate the children, maybe we can break the cycle.”

The learning center is aiming to attract 80 volunteers and is planning

to serve 35 children initially, Johnson said.

Aside from searching for volunteers, learning center staff members are

trying to gather books, paper, pencils and other supplies so it may spend

the next week getting the center set up, she said.

“The students are coming,” Johnson said. “They will be here Feb. 26,

and we will be ready.”

Krissy Raiger certainly seemed prepared Thursday.”I’ve always been

interested in volunteering and have through school, but haven’t found the

right place to volunteer myself,” she said. “I’m going to try this out

because I’m interested in the different variety of people they have come

in, and I think it would be great to have such an impact on little kids.”