A mom, her son, and their path to serving urban youth

For a family looking to serve together, the local school is a natural opportunity. The family naturally cares about it, the kids are already involved, other families can be met, and the needs of the entire community can be served. However, this opportunity for service can also be troubling, especially for families who live in communities that are less well off.

Because of the way educational resources are allocated in the U.S., the communities with the most need are usually the ones with the worst schools. Many SixSeeds parents have struggled with the question: “Should we stay in this neighborhood and try to help improve local schools?” or “Should we stay in the neighborhood, but send our kids to private school?” or “Do we need to move to get the best possible education for our kids?” Among our parents, considerable angst, soul searching, and conversations have been devoted to this very question. Not a few of us have recognized that lofty ideals that we so glibly espoused in college suddenly sound very different when we are talking about the actual persons most precious in the universe to us.

“Should we stay in this neighborhood and try to help improve local schools?" or "Should we stay in the neighborhood, but send our kids to private school?" or "Do we need to move to get the best possible education for our kids?”

In questions like these, we believe strongly that there is no right answer for every family. The role of SixSeeds is to uphold a wide variety of examples and foster the sharing of ideas. Every family is utterly unique and must decide the right course for it. There is no formula. Among the SixSeeds families, we count an African-American minister who leads a church critical to an inner city neighborhood, but who had to make the gut wrenching decision to move his family to a suburb for the sake of his son’s physical safety. And we also count an Asian American Harvard educated couple who deliberately moved into a crime ridden ghetto and are sending their kids to the local school (we won’t tell you how the grandparents feel about that!) And then there is the majority of us somewhere in between. By being joined together in this quirky partnership that is SixSeeds, we hope that all of us -- in ways that we really can't predict – will be inspired and equipped in the decisions each of us must make for ourselves.

One family that has inspired many of us is the Edelschick-Barneson family. They live in a part of Cambridge, Massachusetts that lies close to Harvard University -- where Jeff is a campus chaplain and Tara works as an adjunct professor. While enjoying many of the benefits of city life, and Cambridge life in particular, they also contend with many of negative aspects of a city, including a recent increase in both petty and serious crime in the neighborhood. In the past year, there has been a disturbing increase in gun violence. Two kids were shot right in front of the neighborhood church that they attend.

The Edelschick-Barnesons moved into the neighborhood after they were married. Jeff began a gut rehab of their “new” home. Tara, having been a public school teacher in New York City for eight years, felt perfectly at ease in the urban environment. But internally something changed when their first child, Zachary, was born. Tara recalls, “Suddenly I would be filled with feelings of stress when I took Zachary out on the streets that I had been so comfortable walking before.” In her career as a teacher, Tara had taught and loved numerous African-American kids who strolled into school with that distinctive city-kid gait, their heads covered in hoodies. After Zach was born, Tara’s feelings about the neighborhood she loved shifted in ways she hadn't expected. “I was surprised, and even ashamed, by my own reactions. Kids who looked exactly the same as the students I knew and loved now seemed vaguely threatening to me."”

Tara remembers walking out feeling, “I think I was just sent a reminder that ‘Oh, yeah, these are the kids I loved before… and I can still love now.”

Not long after realizing she had these feelings, she was holding Zachary and about to exit their neighborhood fast food restaurant. A group of African-American teenagers, faces obscured in hoodies, approached her. She recounts: “I was prepared for them to rush by me, absorbed in their own very loud conversation, peppered with more than a little profanity. Then, one of the boys reaches for the door. He swings it open and says, ‘Here you go, ma’am.’”

Tara remembers walking out feeling, “I think I was just sent a reminder that ‘Oh, yeah, these are the kids I loved before… and I can still love now.”

In the ensuing months, Tara joined with two other women at their local neighborhood church to explore how to serve the kids in their community. Even though all the mothers had kids under age five at the time or were expecting soon, they wanted to help the local schools. In their research, they found there was a critical need for after school enrichment programs for kids aged 13 to 18. In Cambridge, parents with resources gradually leave the city and its schools the older their kids become. This means that the quality of programs for children declines dramatically the older the age range -- just when such enrichment activities are most needed.

The three women came up with the idea for Project M.O.V.E (Meaningful Opportunities via Enrichment). The project combines a wide variety of enrichment activities to help students gain confidence in everything from finances to art appreciation, personal mission statements to public speaking, community service to etiquette. It employs a creative “carrot” by giving students deposits to their personal college fund for each unit completed, as well as an immediate reward of a gift card to The Gap (how else are they going to get more of those hoodies?) and other fun stores. Aimed at the 13-18 age range, it has the potential to make a significant difference in the city. But perhaps more importantly, it is for a few mothers their expression of love for all God’s children.

The project is trying to raise money for the scholarships and gift cards. If you would like to help, you can send contributions to our general “SixSeeds” fund at our address. Please note our policy on directed giving.

Many parents choose to volunteer at their kids’ schools. And that is a very important form of service for so many reasons. But there can be an additional value to expanding your family’s reach to youth outside your immediate age range and demographic. Something important happens for our kids when they see us parents helping in ways that don’t obviously center on their needs. And something good happens for us as parents as well when we stretch our own boundaries of concern. One idea: homeless shelters for families almost always could use outside families coming in to arrange recreational and educational activities for the kids.