Our Next Generation: High School Connection
According to their website, www.ongkids.org, Our Next Generation’s High School Connection program is one that is “designed to provide our teenagers with both a structured program as well as a safe, supervised environment for social activities and opportunities for workforce training and soft-skill development.” This program has been running for approximately six years and includes High School aged kids from both in the neighborhood around Our Next Generation and neighborhoods and high schools across Milwaukee. The majority of the students in the High School Connection are African American. Some even travel up to an hour on the bus to attend every Tuesday and Thursday, due to displacement in their home lives. Many of the students come from troubled backgrounds and may not live with their biological parents and live with friends or other family members. On an average night there are forty students that attend in the two and a half hour period that the program runs.
An average day for the High School Connection begins at 4, when the volunteers and program leaders begin to prepare for the student’s arrival. The Our Next Generation Staff includes education coordinators and program leaders, who are paid staff and interns and volunteers, who usually come from Milwaukee Universities. When the students come in, they sit down with their friends and are given a free meal. Afterwards they work on homework or just play games and socialize until they leave. Although this is an after-school program, it is more of a safe environment to socialize than a structured classroom setting. Many of the students work on homework and can ask the volunteers or staff questions if they need help, but many also just sit and socialize with their friends.
One of the main priorities of Our Next Generation is to create a safe environment for the students. This is apparent both in the actual building and what the staff promotes. They try to teach the students personal development, career and educational enrichment, and they provide tutoring for them, something, which many of them do not get at home. They also aid them in their decision processes and teach them the concept of consequences, which again, is a concept that they rarely get at home. Along with teaching the students these life lessons, they also bring them to tour colleges and learn about different professions. According to their website, seniors who participate in the High School Connection program have a 100% graduation rate, which is an amazing number when compared to the average graduation rate in MPS schools, which according to an article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from April 2008, is just above 50%.
High School Connection is an amazing service to these troubled teens, who might be lost without it. They are given a place to get free food and hang out with their friends in a safe environment. An environment, which also motivates them and tells them they can make something out of their lives, something they probably don’t hear too often, especially from a sincere and willing staff. Although some may argue that this program is treating the symptoms and not the sickness, it is much better than having the Milwaukee youth wither away.
www.ongkids.org
http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/29395934.html
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Reflection
I found both the final project and the mid-term project to be interesting learning experiences, about a community in Milwaukee that I knew nothing about. It is one thing to know about the bad neighborhoods in Milwaukee from the media or from sheltered peers, but it is something totally different to actually experience the neighborhood for yourself. From what I saw and the time I spent in the neighborhood, it looked and felt like a normal neighborhood to me, much like the one that I grew up in. There are grocery stores, gas stations, schools and everything that is in any normal community and on its surface it looks to be a normal community, but it is not. Once you delve deeper into it, you realize it for what it is, a community in ruin and strife.
There is much to be done within the community, yet there is not much being done. There are organizations and churches, like Our Next Generation, but their focus is on too small of a scale, and for good reason, the work that needs to be done in this community isn’t something that can be done easily. The entire mindset of those who live in the community needs to be changed, but those living within the community have their own lives to worry about. From the stories I’ve heard, everyone in the area seems to be part of the same struggle, but they refuse to work together to end it. They need to get the drugs and prostitution out, but they seem to be the only reliable income. I talked to one of the staff members at Our Next Generation about the community and he said they had been trying to get more police protection around the neighborhood, but at the same time didn’t want the police snooping around in their business or going into their houses. With paradoxes like these, the community is going to continue to suffer. The residents of the area must get together and be a community again and rebuild their neighborhood.
But who am I to judge? Who am I to talk about what these people should do? This is the inner conflict I had while visiting this neighborhood, documenting it and writing up the research I found on it. When I was at Our Next Generation, a man I was explaining the project to asked me “so, basically your project is to go to the ‘hood and take pictures?” And even though this was meant sarcastically, it really confirmed my stance on the project. While it was informative to know a little bit about the community and become aware of how these people live, what good does it do? I will be on the outside looking in, observing with my white eyes and suburban origin and preconceptions, only to spend an hour or two to take pictures, then return home. I understand the purpose of the project and am glad that I did it, but I left feeling a sense of guilt. As I drove home, I felt like an intruder, I almost felt a little dirty. Who was I to go into their neighborhood to take pictures and document their disaster? Both the people I talked to and I knew I wasn’t there because their community is prospering. What difference was I going to make? They have all forgotten my name and I theirs. In order to make a difference, I would have to make a huge commitment that takes more than a couple of hours and that I’m not yet ready to make. Maybe someday I will be able to make such a commitment, but it is not something that I can half ass. I refuse to be another white college student “volunteering”, sitting in the corner interacting only with the other white college student volunteers, texting on my blackberry for a required amount of hours, only to go home and forget. These are people who need and deserve more than that. These are people. Maybe someday I can help them. Hopefully. But today, I’m the disconnected photographer and they’re the photographs. Sorry.
There is much to be done within the community, yet there is not much being done. There are organizations and churches, like Our Next Generation, but their focus is on too small of a scale, and for good reason, the work that needs to be done in this community isn’t something that can be done easily. The entire mindset of those who live in the community needs to be changed, but those living within the community have their own lives to worry about. From the stories I’ve heard, everyone in the area seems to be part of the same struggle, but they refuse to work together to end it. They need to get the drugs and prostitution out, but they seem to be the only reliable income. I talked to one of the staff members at Our Next Generation about the community and he said they had been trying to get more police protection around the neighborhood, but at the same time didn’t want the police snooping around in their business or going into their houses. With paradoxes like these, the community is going to continue to suffer. The residents of the area must get together and be a community again and rebuild their neighborhood.
But who am I to judge? Who am I to talk about what these people should do? This is the inner conflict I had while visiting this neighborhood, documenting it and writing up the research I found on it. When I was at Our Next Generation, a man I was explaining the project to asked me “so, basically your project is to go to the ‘hood and take pictures?” And even though this was meant sarcastically, it really confirmed my stance on the project. While it was informative to know a little bit about the community and become aware of how these people live, what good does it do? I will be on the outside looking in, observing with my white eyes and suburban origin and preconceptions, only to spend an hour or two to take pictures, then return home. I understand the purpose of the project and am glad that I did it, but I left feeling a sense of guilt. As I drove home, I felt like an intruder, I almost felt a little dirty. Who was I to go into their neighborhood to take pictures and document their disaster? Both the people I talked to and I knew I wasn’t there because their community is prospering. What difference was I going to make? They have all forgotten my name and I theirs. In order to make a difference, I would have to make a huge commitment that takes more than a couple of hours and that I’m not yet ready to make. Maybe someday I will be able to make such a commitment, but it is not something that I can half ass. I refuse to be another white college student “volunteering”, sitting in the corner interacting only with the other white college student volunteers, texting on my blackberry for a required amount of hours, only to go home and forget. These are people who need and deserve more than that. These are people. Maybe someday I can help them. Hopefully. But today, I’m the disconnected photographer and they’re the photographs. Sorry.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Artist Statement
Although skeptical at first about the purpose of this project, it ended up being a great experience for me. I really enjoy walking around places foreign to me and this was definitely one of them. When I walked through the neighborhood for the hour or so that I did, I really did not think it was a bad neighborhood at all. Sure, it was poor, but I didn’t think a lot of crime or drugs would be going on in it. It just didn’t look like it. Then when I talked to Aru he really opened my eyes up to it. Some of the dialogue was cut for the sake of fluency and to save space, but we really had a very open dialogue about race and race relations. This is something that I would have never got on the east side. We also talked about each others backgrounds in the sense of commonalities. The thing that hits me the hardest is thinking that when I left the neighborhood, he stayed. Even though he is trying to help and change it, he is still around it all of the time and that must get old. To constantly fight to keep your community not hungry, off drugs and off the streets would be a big burden to bear, especially since not that many people are helping him out. If I could, I would thank him not only for being the driving force of this project for me, but also giving me a new perspective of how things are in Milwaukee.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
