Kids Club pulse of community

Story and photo by Nicole Morales
The Portland Upside
October 2009

Jackie Johnson (left) and Tia Bennett. Tia, the Activities Director at Cherry Blossom Estates, developed an after-school club for kids in the housing complex that has united its diversity.

Cherry Blossom Estates, home to 85 families, is doing something different—progressively different—from other apartment complexes that are home to low-income families. While most housing complexes are content to simply rent out and maintain their units, Cherry Blossom provides for a full-time Activities Director. The director’s responsibilities range from ensuring the children are fed and have a place to go after school to teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) to the adult residents.

I recently visited the community—located just off 102nd Avenue and Washington Street in Southeast Portland—to find out how Tia Bennett, Activities Director, has transformed a once barren-walled clubhouse into the communal pulse of the complex. Tia directs and supervises the Kids Club, an after-school program for approximately 30 five- to twelve-year-olds, and has expanded the program to include Teen Time for the older youth, where teenagers can chill by the pool, play volleyball or just have a safe space to talk. Most recently Tia initiated a community cleanup crew in which youth screen the apartment complex grounds and pick up garbage.

Tia’s involvement doesn’t stop there. She regularly updates a resource book for residents and recently helped to establish the complex’s Neighborhood Watch program. She is currently working on implementing med van visits for the senior residents.

Here’s what I learned when I sat down to talk about Kids Club with Tia and long-time resident Jackie Johnson.

Upside: You were specifically hired on as the Activities Director?
Tia: Yes, and I try to make something available for everybody.

Upside: Do you see yourself as a teacher, as a parent, or as a mentor?
Tia: I would say all of the above. I do the teaching, the ESL instruction, the tutoring, the activity planning, and the resident help. I really do feel like a mentor to the children and adults here.

Upside: The adults, too?
Tia: I do ESL tutoring for the adults. Our community is very diverse because of the many nationalities here. They all just come together and that’s my favorite part of it.

Upside: What was it like at Cherry Blossom when you first arrived?
Tia: When I came in, the clubhouse was pretty much empty and it was a really dark brown. It didn’t really have much going for it. They told me, “Do what you want with it—we want it to be kid friendly.” They gave me a budget and I made it a classroom setting.

Upside: Not all classrooms are as warm and inviting as this. (Sunshine yellow and cherry red walls complement the kids’ colored name-bug projects that drape one corner of the room. Popsicle puppets that resemble their creators line the doorway.) What happened when you began five years ago?
Tia: The first year it sat empty. I had to go door to door and tell people, “Come into the clubhouse, learn ESL, send your children, it’s free.” Once the children started coming, it was very segregated. They didn’t talk or play together. They came to the clubhouse and all sat at their different tables by nationality. And a few times, they would say, “Well you can’t sit here, you’re not [my nationality].” This just broke my heart.

Upside: And now?
Tia: Now, they’re just best friends. And I really think the kids have brought the adults together. Every year we have these events. For instance, we started out with five people for the first Thanksgiving Harvest party and then the next year we had 25 people. And just this last barbecue we had over a 100 people! It’s just amazing how you see all the cultures come together.
Jackie: The clannishness has dissipated. The example that Tia refers to of the kids coming together translates to the adults and that’s why I’m personally so excited about what goes on here. I grew up with “old world thinking,” and that would probably describe a lot of the parents’ thinking that reside here. So I have a real keen appreciation of what Tia does with the kids.

Upside: How do you define yourself within the program, Jackie?
Jackie: Very much an advocate for what happens here and very much an advocate for the whole goal that Jim, the owner, has.
Tia: Jackie gives me suggestions. She’ll see things outside that I don’t see and give me ideas, like the need for a safety class.

Upside: Jackie, you were here before Jim purchased the property?
Jackie: Yes, I’ve been here since 2000. At that time it had two owners and the managers changed every six months. So there was no time for continuity, there was no time to build anything. This clubhouse sat empty most of the time.

When I first met Jim (the owner of Cherry Blossom Estates), he told me about his childhood. He said that he grew up in income-restricted housing and he made a commitment to himself that if he ever was able to give back, he would.

Upside: (I emailed Jim Keefe, who lives in California, and asked him some questions about his role in Cherry Blossom Estates.) How has your childhood inspired you to want to help youngsters and their families have a positive living and learning environment?
Jim: I grew up in a government-assisted housing project in Massachusetts. [My brother, three sisters, and I] needed to be outside… since there was not a lot of room inside. I feel that I greatly benefited from after school and summer youth programs in our local community. These programs always had a strong educational component and access to education changed my life. Now that I am able to do so, I believe that I have a duty to sponsor programs like ours at Cherry Blossom and to staff them with enthusiastic and caring people like Tia.

Upside: What do you hope to achieve with the club?
Jim: Our educational programs have four main goals: to supplement resident access to educational resources, to insure that our children are fed and have a place to go after school, to link our resident families with other resources in the area and to foster goodwill at our community.

Upside: Was Cherry Blossom Estates’ Kids Club your first attempt at implementing an educational program for youth?
Jim: No. Our programs…are modeled after those being done on a larger scale by Project Access, Inc., a nonprofit [that strives to increase communal resources and improve the livelihood for low income families]. It was founded by my partners ten years ago.

Upside: How do you define your role with the club?
Jim: Cherry Blossom Estates is owned by a partnership with two general partners: my company and Affordable Housing Access, a Southern California nonprofit. Our role is to provide funding and overall management for the program.

I believe that our programs at Cherry Blossom should stand on their own. I would rather see you focus on and celebrate the daily achievements and successes of our children. Lots of people I never knew (let alone never thanked) put the programs that helped me in place. I am content to simply return the favor for the children we can help.

Upside: A prime example of Cherry Blossom’s communal cohesiveness was when one of Jackie’s neighbors couldn’t find her child anywhere on the complex. Along with the three police officers called to the scene, all of the residents got involved in the search.
Jackie: It was very touching to see the diverse community rally around a common need.

Upside: Turns out the young girl had hid under some blankets in the bedroom.
Tia: It was like our very own Amber Alert. (Laughter).

We live in a big city and I’d always wanted to know what it felt like to be in a smaller community… just by living here I get that feeling like the TV show Cheers, “where everybody knows your name.”

Jackie: My hope is that someone will read about this and realize they can do what Tia has done with the club. There are so many diverse income-restricted communities. The seeds that Tia plants on a regular basis at Cherry Blossom can be planted anywhere.

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Nicole Morales strives to connect people via multicultural education and writing. She teaches ESL at a private university outside of Portland and welcomes your inquiries at
nmorales.writes@gmail.com