ed operate out of trailers while others even operate out of the back of cars.
Santa Monica PAL first started in 1989 at Virginia Avenue Park with a goal to reach out to 100 kids in the neighborhood. It quickly grew into several hundred kids and outgrew its small facility in a matter of a few years.
“It was ‘boom.’ One hundred kids were there on the first day,” Loggins-Tazi said. “Luckily people had the foresight to get funding like the asset forfeitures to build the youth center.”
A $790,000 state grant also helped pay for the facility, which was built in 1993 and accommodates the 2,300 Santa Monica kids registered in the program.
PAL is a citywide program for kids. It offers free educational, cultural and athletic activities for boys and girls ages 6 to 17. The purpose of the program is to foster positive relationships between youth, the community and police who staff the center and volunteer as coaches and instructors.
PAL operates year-round, offering many programs and special events, such as dances, fishing trips, family picnics and holiday parties.
Santa Monica’s PAL is designed to keep kids off the street and provide them with enough activities to keep them busy and out of trouble.
“I had no where to go and I didn’t want to go home because you get bored,” said 13-year-old Brian Villa who started going to PAL when he was 5. “It’s good, clean, supervised fun.”
For most kids, the PAL youth center offers them a place to hang out, gives them an opportunity to make friends and provides them with amenities that would otherwise not be available to them. The youth center has a full gymnasium, a computer lab, an arcade, big screen TV and new furniture.
Jose Meyer, 17, has been going to PAL nearly half of his life. He has stuck with it because of the friends he’s made and the sports he plays with them.
“They have stuff you don’t have at your house,” he said. “I didn’t have anything to do and I was on the street wasting my time.”
Many of the kids who worked during Chez PAL sit on the organization’s youth district council, which is made up mostly of teenagers. The council helps make decisions on PAL’s events and programs. The teens are heavily involved in community service — they are asked to commit to eight hours but many of them put in between 16 and 24 hours a week, Loggins-Tazi said.
The city funds a large portion of PAL’s nearly $300,000 annual budget through its general fund. And well over 100 city employees are voluntarily enrolled in a payroll deduction fund that gives about $1,600 monthly to PAL.
“We get a lot of community support,” Loggins-Tazi said. “For some people they like the Y, others like the Boys and Girls Club and some like PAL. There should be a youth center on every corner.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 12, 2003. Read the original PDF.