Program teaches youth responsibility
MID-CITY All it took was a few hours of community service to get Edward Cheng to break out of his shell.
Soft-spoken and reserved, Cheng was just another freshman lost in the sea of students at St. Monica High School when the teenager sought community in a youth program offered through the American Red Cross of Santa Monica.
In it he found opportunities to help others, organizing blood drives and mobilizing his peers to become more engaged in community service.
“I gained the ability to talk to people more and become more social,” the incoming senior at St. Monica said.“I do outreach and my job is to recruit and talk to people about fundraisers, blood drives and the Red Cross in general.”
He is among a group of about 30 teenagers with similar stories of personal maturity, some learning responsibility, others communication skills, all attained as a result of the youth program at the American Red Cross’ Santa Monica Chapter.
The program was founded in 1996 by then youth services coordinator Robert Chatman as a way to better link local teenagers with volunteer opportunities, formalizing an existing relationship between it and the local public middle schools which already fed students to the Red Cross for community service requirements.
About eight students participated in the program’s inception year, visiting homes, learning CPR and conducting administrative tasks for the chapter. More than 1,000 students have since passed through the program.
“We’re one of the only organizations who teach emergency preparedness, life-saving skills, and we try to encourage them to work in each department to learn their niche,” Chatman said.
The majority of the students join the program in the eighth grade to complete the community service hours mandated at both Lincoln and John Adams middle schools. Though the number of participants taper off as the students get older, there are quite a few who remain after the service requirement is completed, according to Cory Russell, the program supervisor. He estimates the retention rate past eighth grade is about 50 percent.
The youth program is open to kids between the ages of 13 and 18, the majority of students coming from Santa Monica schools.
Russell is credited with reviving the program and adding more structure since he arrived at the Red Cross in early 2007. The 21-year-old AmeriCorps volunteer has a special connection with the students, some of whom are just a few years younger, Chatman, now the volunteer coordinator, said.
Among the changes that Russell drilled into the program was adding weekly meetings with the teenagers, creating a sense of continuity. Students are also now more involved in the various aspects of the Red Cross, participating in humanitarian projects such as the disaster relief efforts following the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The program includes various pet projects, such as the recently completed Measles Initiative in which teens sold $2 lapel pins, its proceeds paying to both vaccinate children and support youth program activities. The students earlier this year were also kept busy with the TAP project, which asked diners to give up a glass of water during their meal and instead donate money to fund clean water initiatives in Africa. Students covered the city asking local restaurants to participate.
“Kids are not the future of the Red Cross,” Russell said. “They’re doing it now.”
Many of the program participants are also members of their school’s Red Cross Clubs, serving as ambassadors of the local chapter to their respective high schools.
Monica Choo, a junior at Santa Monica High School, joined the program when she was an eighth grader and is now the president of the Samohi Red Cross Club.
The story in how she reached the program was the same as the other participants — a student seeking to complete her required community service hours.
But after completing the requirement, Choo felt a sense of accomplishment, deciding that she wanted to make a difference.
“I’ve developed lots of leadership skills and became more outgoing,” Choo said. “ I feel like it’s made me a better person.”
Cheng joined the youth program his freshman year, the same year in which he founded the Red Cross Club at St. Monica.
Now Cheng serves as youth member on the Red Cross chapters’ Board of Directors.
Among Cheng’s most notable accomplishments was organizing a three-day blood drive at St. Monica, exceeding the number of donors than the Samohi Red Cross Club was able to gather in a month’s time.
The result of the blood drive was an added participation in the club, growing from four students in its inception year to 15 members today.
“We’re going to continue the club even after I graduate,” he said. “We’re still finding more and more people to join.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 17, 2008. Read the original PDF.