Earlier this year, Heart of Los Angeles deepened our partnership with the Watts Labor Community Action Committee (WLCAC) to bring our academic and visual arts programs to their FamilySource Centers in Watts and Southeast LA. We also partnered with the Koreatown Youth & Community Center (KYCC) to bring programming to the FamilySource Center (FSC) that they operate in Koreatown’s Pico/Union area. What is an FSC? It’s a one-stop shop in under-resourced neighborhoods for low-income residents to find social, educational, work, and family support services. Heading up Heart of LA’s programming at these three FSC locations is Bridges Program Director Silvia España, who brings a tremendous amount of experience to the work.
Silvia was once a young student at Heart of LA herself. At age nine she was enrolled by her mother, who needed someplace safe for Silvia to be after school while she worked. Heart of LA helped Silvia stay on track with homework, graduate high school, and go to the prestigious Colorado College. She returned to Heart of LA as a Bridges tutor during the summer of her senior year of college, and today, as the program’s director, Silvia knows better than anyone how much of a difference Bridges can make in a child’s life. Places like Heart of LA and the FSCs we’re so proud to partner with offer what too many kids simply can’t get at school: structured programming with clear expectations, a culture of inclusiveness, teacher consistency, and one-on-one support.
We’re already seeing huge impacts at the FSC sites Heart of LA serves, and we’re just getting started. Kids whose schools don’t offer quality visual arts have been thrilled to be able to access the engaging activities Heart of LA provides through our integrated programming. Kids whose senior year experience suffered because they had a different substitute teacher each week for most of the year have been bolstered by the consistency of seeing the same faces day after day. Students are showing up excited to learn, play, and grow. Heart of LA has already taken groups of kids from Watts, South LA, and Koreatown to half a dozen college campuses, where they get tours led by college-going Heart of LA alumni, explore the facilities, participate in workshops, and – most importantly – have an opportunity to see that postsecondary institutions are not out of reach, that they too belong there.
None of it would be possible without the support and trust of the WLCAC and KYCC, their staff, and leadership. What’s more – as is true with all things at Heart of LA – none of it is possible without you. Please show your support for Heart of LA this Winter, because the work bringing educational opportunities to every child in Los Angeles is just getting started, and it takes all of us.
