At Risk Children Learning to Dream

As the students walked in to start their first day of the summer camp they looked up to these strange and unfamiliar faces in the community center. Some were bold enough to ask the new adults who they were and others were even bolder and asked if they wanted to play with them.   Within minutes the volunteers and the children had become fast friends.  If an outsider had walked into the room you would have never known the room was filled with one minute, old friends. On this Tuesday, experimenting with chemical reactions and viewing classrooms around the world was on the agenda.

Several local college students have come together to expose the youth of Pomona to the joys of learning.  The program was developed to enhance each child’s sense of the future and see that there is more to the world then what they see in their everyday communities.  Here the volunteers teach the kid’s that there is more than one way of learning and implement ideas of goals to be accomplished by each of them.

The day started off by watching the first volunteer teacher mix cabbage water, vinegar, and baking soda in a liter bottle with a balloon over the top.  As the baking soda begins to sizzle and the balloon expanded to capacity the children’s eyes grew in amazement. Then they too were able to make their balloon contraption and watch it inflate.  After a brief recess the children rejoined and another volunteer teacher took the stage.  This time the children were shown pictures of other youth children going to school in different parts of the world. They were intrigued to see some students sit on the floor instead of desks or that there were only male students attending.  After discussing different classrooms in Nigeria, Mexico, and India, the topic of discussion moved to “What can you do with an education? Why do we go to school?”

For most students, school is out and summer has started. To a small group of children in the Pomona area learning has not come to an end.  It is here at the Garfield Neighborhood Center that 25 to 40 financially disadvantaged and at-risk children gather and embrace the volunteers from the Insan organization.  Some of the activies planned for the children’s include learning the French language, understanding how science surrounds us, and creating dreams of careers when they grow up. Their goal is to leave a positive mark and offer them a new horizon despite the harsh realities surrounding them.