The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper The Spokesman-Review
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
Current Temperature
31°F
Current Conditions
Mist
View complete weather report

Color Scheme

Subscribe now

Center hopes for a helping hand

Jahil Smith, 9, does homework at the Emmanuel Center in Spokane on Thursday. There are between 10 and 20 students who attend the program. They are tutored by students from Spokane Community Colleges. (Jed Conklin / The Spokesman-Review)
By Kevin Graman kevingr@spokesman.com
Jahil Smith, 9, does homework at the Emmanuel Center in Spokane on Thursday. There are between 10 and 20 students who attend the program. They are tutored by students from Spokane Community Colleges. (Jed Conklin / The Spokesman-Review)

The Rev. Lonnie Mitchell said he knows the Emmanuel Family Life Center is in the Lord’s hands, but even the Lord can use a little public relations now and then.

The pastor of Bethel AME Church said construction of the community center that will be so important to the people of the East Central Neighborhood is stalled for lack of funding.

“All of our programs are in cubbyholes,” Mitchell said of the services offered by Bethel’s nonprofit charity, the Richard Allen Youth Academy.

The child care program serving low-income children ages 1 month to 8 years is in the basement of the church. The after-school tutoring program is run out of the recreation center of the Housing and Urban Development project behind the church. The general equivalency diploma program administered by Spokane Community Colleges had to move out for lack of room.

“We’ve outgrown our little space,” said Brenda Kane, academy executive director. “You can see it in the summer when everyone is here.”

The children are on vacation, but their parents still have to work, Kane explained.

Bethel AME, 645 S. Richard Allen Court, is one of the two oldest African-American churches in Washington. Spokane’s Calvary Baptist was founded just a couple of months before Bethel in 1890, Mitchell said.

Many children in the neighborhood who attend Grant Elementary School, Sacajawea Middle School and Lewis and Clark High School come by the center after school to get help with their homework from Community Colleges of Spokane students. An Eastern Washington University student also has volunteered to help, Kane said.

“It’s important,” she said, “because kids of color are not passing the WASL.”

A look at Washington Assessment of Student Learning scores for black seventh-graders at Sacajawea for the 2005-06 school year shows 44 percent passed the reading portion, 24 percent passed math and 60 percent passed writing.

That compares with 66.6 percent, 58.7 percent and 74.9 percent, respectively, for the entire seventh-grade class.

A minimum of 15 students per day are tutored at the Richard Allen Youth Academy, Kane said. Many families can’t afford computers, and their children use the center’s 12 computers for supervised Internet access.

“Our goal is to take people from dependency to self-sufficiency,” the director said.

The after-school, child-care and GED programs are a big part of that mission. Kane hopes to double the number of tutored students, as well as win accreditation for the child-care center when all the services can be consolidated in the new center.

Mitchell said the Gates Foundation has committed about $200,000 in computer assistance for when the project is completed.

But construction of the new building directly behind the church halted in summer when a $400,000 Housing and Urban Development grant ran out, Mitchell said. Total cost of the project is about $1.6 million.

The church has applied for more capital funding from the state and federal governments, “but we can’t count on that,” Mitchell said.

For now, both he and Kane are hoping for a “blessing,” some good public relations and maybe someone interested in a tax write-off.