Volunteering on empty

Editor’s note: This is the second of a three-part series on how the recession is affecting the Newport-Mesa area. Part three will appear Sept. 29.

Jenna Tourje sat down earlier this year with the girl she was mentoring for the Mika Community Development Corporation and made a list of things the two of them wanted to do together. The list included going to the beach, baking apple pies and other typical mentor activities — and a couple of more expensive ones, like seeing the New Boyz in concert.

By now, 13-year-old Paulina Ortiz has accomplished about half the items on the list. Tourje, meanwhile, has a new goal of her own. The former full-time staffer for Mika was laid off in June, and she’s busy mailing applications and seeking another job while pursuing a master’s degree at UC Irvine.

In the meantime, the Costa Mesa resident has people at her former workplace who depend on her. And so Tourje is back at Mika every week — volunteering without pay for the Westside residents she’s come to know over the past two years.

“I had so many connections in the neighborhood, it was hard to cut them off,” said Tourje, who served as a center coordinator for the nonprofit and now oversees its mentoring program.

Like other nonprofits, Mika, which formed in 2003 to fight drugs and gangs and foment community activism on the Westside, has struggled to stay afloat during the recession. Executive Director Crissy Brooks said her paid staff has been reduced from 12 members to seven, as three employees were laid off and two left without being replaced.

Mika’s mission, though, is to encourage people to help their neighborhoods without always reaping a tangible reward. And in volunteers like Tourje, Brooks can see that ethic shining through.

“She really believes in what we do,” Brooks said. “So it’s been very humbling for me.”

Not as much to give

Mika, which covers four Westside neighborhoods, was founded by local church and community members who perceived a lack of role models and job opportunities in the area. The centers on Center Street, Maple and Baker avenues provide tutoring, neighborhood cleanup days, children’s Bible classes and an annual basketball tournament with local police, among other things.

The nonprofit costs about $400,000 to run annually, and most of that is through donations, which have slowed down since the recession began.

Brooks said a number of Mika’s usual donors, both individuals and corporations, have cut their allotments as they tightened their own belts.

Even with Community Development Block Grant funds increasing from $5,000 to $20,000 for the coming fiscal year, Brooks expects the nonprofit’s income this year to be about 30% less than it was in 2008.

“We haven’t really changed what we’re doing,” Brooks said. “It’s just that people who believe in what we’re doing aren’t capable of giving as much this year. We haven’t had as much coming in because people don’t have as much to give away.”

Given those budget woes, Tourje wasn’t surprised when her job was reduced from full time to part time in March. Three months later, she and two other youth coordinators were laid off.

Of the five full-time positions recently vacated at Mika, Brooks plans to refill only one through a grant from AmeriCorps.

With its staff reduced, Mika — which typically has about 300 volunteers a year — relies more than ever on unpaid help. So when Tourje got an offer to stay onboard as a mentor coordinator, she found it hard to say no.

Now, Tourje coordinates more than two dozen mentors, tracking their hours, connecting them to the resources they need and meeting with them on a quarterly basis. She’s also hitting the books at UCI, working toward her master’s in urban and regional planning. Her only income is unemployment.

But money matters don’t seem as important to Tourje when she meets with Paulina.

The Ensign Intermediate School seventh-grader, who moved to Costa Mesa with her family last year, sees her mentor at least once a week — even more than the program requires. Also, like Tourje, she has a streak of community activism: She recently signed up at Mika to mentor younger kids with their homework.

On a recent day, the pair took Tourje’s roommate’s dog for a walk in TeWinkle Park and discussed plans to have a picnic in UCI’s Aldrich Park. In between going over the goals on their list, they also talked about Paulina’s plans for the future.

“I want to be a lawyer,” Paulina said. “An immigration lawyer.”

“My kind of girl,” Tourje replied, grinning.

Start of a new year

Monday afternoon, Mika reopened its youth program for the fall semester, after taking a month off following the end of its summer program.

At the facilities on Center Street, children filled the round tables with older kids and adult volunteers.

Keturah Kennedy, the director of operations for Mika, said the program would be leaner in places this fall due to staff cuts. The arts portion, for one, would be combined with the regular tutoring, and some events would be discontinued.

“It’s definitely been difficult,” Kennedy said. “But we’ve also cut out things we didn’t necessarily need and refocused our energy on what really aligns with our mission.”

Cuts or not, the program is still essential to Lupita Gonzalez, a mother of two Whittier Elementary School students and a volunteer parent coordinator. Gonzalez, who cradled a baby outside the Center Street office while her daughters studied Monday, said she couldn’t imagine her neighborhood without the services Mika provides.

“It wouldn’t be the same for me,” she said in Spanish as a Mika staffer translated. “If Mika wasn’t here, my children wouldn’t have a place to go after school.”

Mika Community Development Corporation

Year Founded: 2003

Executive Director: Crissy Brooks

Mission: To fight gangs, unemployment and other problems on the Westside

Services: Tutoring, one-on-one mentoring, Bible classes, job counseling and more

Contact: Call (949) 645-0075 or visit www.mikacdc.org