Field work city bus tour spotlights campaign-supported service agencies

Deborah Temkin Contributing Editor

This year’s Community Works campaign aims to continue to support several important, but often under-funded, social service organizations. These different community groups and service centers have become an invaluable resource to many residents of Poughkeepsie. Director of Field Work Peter Leonard hoped to highlight just a few of these organizations during a trip around Poughkeepsie on Sept. 26, on the “Follow Your Contributions” Tour.

Seventeen organizations are scheduled to receive funds from this year’s efforts. On the Community Works tour, which is planned for three additional dates this semester, participants meet with representatives of eight of these organizations and witness the great need that resides within the Hudson Valley.

New Horizons Resources

The tour commences with a stop at the small office building belonging to New Horizons Resources. “They are probably the best run agency in the Hudson Valley,” said Leonard. “

There is a magic that is enthused throughout the organization. Each member of the administration is enthused with the mission of the agency.”

New Horizons provides residential, in-home, and respite services for families with mentally and physically disabled members. Providing care and therapy, the agency addresses the quality of life for both patients and families in their care. New Horizons offers social events and experienced, care for families to be able to have a break from the constant needs of their dependents, while still knowing that their loved ones are in the best care possible.

Services at New Horizons range from the over 20 specially designed houses and apartments, to day and weekend programs which bring members into the community, to Friday Night Out, designed to allow children to socialize while parents enjoy a night to themselves.

Latinos Unidos

While on the way to the next organization, housed at Poughkeepsie High School, Leonard broke into a story about a particular Mexican immigrant-worker who was killed in a hit-and-run accident in the early 90s. That incident, he said, truly made the Poughkeepsie community aware of one of their greatest growing needs—that of the great immigration of workers from Oaxaca, Mexico.

Latino Unidos, Leonard explained, has evolved from the need for community and identity among the children of these immigrants, and their academic ambitions to achieve higher education.

Family Partnership Center

Part experiment, part innovation, the Family Partnership Center boasts the distinction of the only collaborative social services center in the nation that houses over 30 agencies.

“It’s a pretty simple statement to make that we’re trying to establish collaboration,” said President of the Family Partnership Center Joe D’Ambrosio. “We’re trying to encompass a person as a whole and give them the services they need.”

Housed within the converted high school are agencies that range from emergency food and shelter operations to education and literacy programs, to public defenders and mental health services. “We see about a thousand people a day,” said D’Ambrosio. “It’s really amazing to see a person come in and get the help they need.”

Still, D’Ambrosio was quick to identify the possible conflicts that might arrive from the collaborative nature of the center. “How do we deal with the competition between social agencies for funding?”

Leonard identified this as one of the reasons to include the center as a whole for the first time this year. “Vassar really wants to be part of this ambitious collaboration,” said Leonard.

The Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library

On the second floor of the Family Partnership Center, housed in a colorful room donned with a student-created mural on the back wall, resides this African-centered library. While still growing, the library boasts volumes aiming to provide multicultural awareness, African and African-American heroes and role-models, and giving a cultural awareness which is often lost in schools.

Director of the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library Odell Winfield explained that the library not only provides reading materials to expand this knowledge, but also runs summer programs in conjunction with Marist, SUNY New Paltz, and other organizations around the community to provide teens with a sense of identity and importance in their world.

Winfield also described a program involving storytelling by rappers from Rockador Records. The event, which will be held at the Center, will be held Nov. 19 and is open to the public for a $5 donation. “We’re having the rappers come in and read to the kids and inspire them,” said Winfield.

Currently, the library is looking to build its collection of books for 12 to 15 year-olds and is also looking for volunteers to help during the library while it’s open on Mondays and Wednesdays. “We like folks to work with the kids. We like them to get their hands dirty tutoring…anyone who has the time or energy, come in,” said Winfield.

John Flowers’ Community Celebrations

Started in 1992, Community Celebrations aims to give needy people a way to celebrate American religious traditions. Sponsoring five different events throughout the course of the year, the organization helps over 10,000 people a year celebrate, if only for those instances.

These events include “Mother’s Day Roses,” where over 3,000 roses are distributed to mothers in the Hudson Valley; “The Father’s Day Parade,” the first Father’s Day Parade in New York State History; “Traditional Easter Egg Hunt;” “Christmas Gifts in Nursing Homes and Hospitals;” and “Church Picnic to Celebrate God.”

Organizer John Flowers sponsors the majority of these events from his own pocket and through borrowing from friends and family. “I really need grants to continue,” he said. “I’m really thankful to be part of Vassar’s Community Works.”

Dutchess Outreach

On the other side of the converted high school, Dutchess Outreach provides food, medicine, and clothing for the most needy in the Poughkeepsie community. The organization helps families get back on their feet, and fight their cases in the welfare system.

The agency includes a children’s clothing closet, a food bank, prescription medicine services and advocacy programs. The food bank is currently filled with Girl Scout Cookies and dry goods, as well as fresh baked goods and dairy from local supermarkets. The children’s clothing closet has a plethora of clothing neatly folded on shelves and hung on racks. “We like to give people a sense of dignity,” said Director Brian Riddell. “We hang up our clothes so people don’t have to feel like animals digging through piles of clothing.”

The Lunchbox, also part of the Dutchess Outreach, not only provides a warm midday meal for walk-ins, but also prepares and distributes meals for the home-bound disabled, as well as students at an after school program. A cafeteria setup, the kitchen has a “no questions asked” policy and feeds, on average, 180-190 people a day.

Children’s Media Project

The last stop on the Community Works tour, the Children’s Media Project, is very unlike the prior organizations. Their goal, to introduce and explain the language of media to children, not only encompasses those students living in the grips of poverty, but also students from more affluent communities.

Founded in 1994, the organization not only screens and talks about media, but allows students from all over the Hudson Valley to produce a television show, broadcast both on local and New York City cable television stations, but also on a station in New Zealand. “It’s extremely exciting for kids,” said Director of the Children’s Media Project, Maria Marewski. “Poughkeepsie youth sense that they are in a different dimension than the rest of the world. Kids feel stuck here, but by mixing socioeconomic classes and broadcasting throughout the world, everyone’s world opens up.”

Several students at Vassar, Bard, and SUNY New Paltz have worked with the Children’s Media Project since its inception. “College students need to be mixed too,” said Marewski. “Vassar and Bard students have very different takes on the field of film. It’s important for them to share that with each other.”