GIFFORD — Active minds are stimulated each afternoon during the school year and all day long during the summer months at the Gifford Youth Activity Center, where education is the top priority.
Since opening its doors 15 years ago, the GYAC has stayed true to its mission of providing a holistic environment where at-risk children can enrich their lives through educational and recreational programs.
Current enrollment stands at 153 eager students.
Approximately 80 percent of the students come from single-family households, where the parent often works both day and evening jobs, leaving the children unsupervised, or in the care of a sibling or grandparents whose educational skills may be limited.
“That’s a major disconnect, because of the new curriculums and everything,” says Alfonso Chester, GYAC program director. “When Common Core comes out, it’s all going to be done on computer. And if they don’t have a computer in the home, it’s going to be difficult – very difficult.”
Thanks to a donation from Louis and Joanne Hagopian, Gifford was recently able to replace its outdated computers with ones that support the newer platform, enabling children to test their math and reading skills.
Financial support from Vero Beach residents and corporations such as the George E. Warren Corporation, help provide scholarships to those who can’t afford even the minimal $60 annual tuition.
“We have tons of volunteers and they’re just beginning to return. Quite a few of them are retired educators and that’s a plus,” says Chester, quickly adding that they’re always looking for more. “We let them pick their time and days and what they’d like to do. Some just like to sit and have the kids read to them, and others like to work in the classroom. We’ll accommodate volunteers any way we can. Some of our volunteers have been with us for many years. We have one volunteer who worked in the kindergarten class who I just hired to be a teacher for the first grade; now she’s staff.”
“Education is a way for these kids to break the cycle,” says Nate Bruckner, GYAC director of development. “Everyone dreams of being a ballplayer but the fact of the matter is education will pull these kids and families up. And that’s what we’re here for. Low income kids don’t get the accolades they deserve.
“They’re doing something extraordinary in, a lot of times, a bad situation.”
Success stories are the norm rather than the exception, including GYAC alumna and science teacher Latoya Bullard, one of GYAC’s first students, who obtained a Master’s degree in biology and returned to teach the next generation of superstars.
There are plenty of standouts in the current crop as well.
“When I came here, I didn’t know what to do at first because I used to get bullied and stuff,” says polite, soft-spoken Christopher, who has attended since kindergarten and is now a 14- year-old eighth-grade student at Storm Grove Middle School. “Mr. Chester told me, ‘Never doubt yourself; keep going.’ And he said that once you achieve your goal you can live your dreams.”
An honor roll student whose favorite subjects are math and science, Christopher hopes to emulate his older brother, a senior and straight-A dual enrollment student at Charter High School.
“He actually went here, too,” says Christopher. “He’s the one that inspired me; I got motivated by him. He’ll already have his AA degree and his high school degree once he graduates.”
Math is also a favorite of 9-year-old Jada, a fourth-grade, straight-A dynamo at Glendale Elementary who has been at GYAC since second grade.
“She’s freakishly smart,” says Bruckner with a proud smile. “She’s reading well above her grade level. Her mind’s moving awfully fast.”
“I like equivalent fractions. It’s like when you have one fraction you have to find another fraction that’s equal to that fraction,” states Jada.
She is also an aspiring singer who enjoys learning canons and how to “read the notes” in GYAC’s music class.
Chase, an 11-year-old sixth-grader at Storm Grove Middle with an impish smile, plans to study engineering in college and eventually work at Piper Aircraft.
“I like the challenge it gives you and the rush you get when you get like a really hard question right,” says Chase. “If I really try I can push myself to get As and Bs. I try and push because I know my parents would not like it if I got bad grades.”
Now that he’s a little older, Christopher enjoys assisting other children with subjects he has already mastered “because my mom always said that it’s better to give than to receive. It’s about giving back to the community as well. It helps get kids off the streets.”
“It’s not just an environment where you go in and go straight to the classroom and do your work. It’s a place where you get help with your work,” explains Chase. “We get snacks when we first come in here so that we’re not hungry when we’re in the classroom. And then like, they give us a little bit of time to talk with our friends. Then we go in class and we start our homework, and if we get stuck on anything, the teacher will help us. And when you finish your work, you still get to go out there again so you could talk and socialize with your friends.”
GYAC teachers are all degreed, and Chester says, “Probably about 85 or 90 percent of our teachers actually work in the district. And that’s a plus for us because they know a lot of the students and they know a lot of the parents.”
“Mr. Chester is like a dean of students, the way he knows all these kids in and out,” says Bruckner. “He greets them coming off the bus and says goodbye to them at the end of the day.”
“You have to; that’s the most important part of this,” agrees Chester. “Because sometimes you don’t know what these kids are going through. Sometimes they just need that little encouragement. To know somebody really cares, because you can’t always say that they’ll have that when they go home.”
“We do a summer program too; we’re the only one that does a true academic-based summer program,” says Chester. “They’re in the classroom for half the day. They do the fun things in the afternoon, after the business. All kids lose so much knowledge over the summer if their brains are not being challenged. So we find that that if we can keep them challenged and improve the skills of the ones who were struggling the year before, that’s a plus.”
Bruckner adds that frequently what students lose over the summer, they never gain back.
“It’s a cumulative loss. So you could have someone in the 9th or 10th grade, and they may be reading at a 7th or 8th grade level.”
The summer program is especially important for children transitioning from pre-K to kindergarten, as about half are not kindergarten-ready.
“The rules are different; it’s a big adjustment,” says Chester. “Some of the kids have difficulty sitting at a desk being taught something.”
Fridays are “fun” days, thanks especially to partnerships with the Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation, the Humane Society of Vero Beach and Indian River County, the 4-H Club, the Vero Beach Museum of Art, Riverside Theatre and the University of Florida.
The Gifford Youth Activity Center opened its doors in 1998, the vision of Dan Richardson, Dr. A. Ronald Hudson and the late Dr. William Nigh, working alongside an entire community through its parent organization, the Progressive Civic League.
The GYAC became a separate nonprofit entity in 2002.