After dismissal at Fallstaff Elementary School in northwest Baltimore Friday, fifth-graders Shawnte Blackstone and Aleisha Holden met with some teenagers for an informal, girls-only chat and then practiced layups together and shot baskets in the gym.
At the same time, other high schoolers worked with Fallstaff students on their modern dance moves across the cafeteria floor, and third-graders Isamar Espino, Rodrigo Bermudez and Marlon Morales put the finishing touches on a large city mural in the auditorium with direction from some male volunteers.
Through the Jewish Volunteer Connection?s Commitment to Service Initiative, or “CSI: Baltimore,” 16 high school teens, boys and girls, from local private and public schools and Jewish denominations are in the second year of a program designed to link budding young service-oriented leaders with communities that could use a little help.
Paulina Rosenbaum, a junior at Beth Tfiloh, and Sarit Rothschild, an 11th-grader at the Rambam School, created the Girls Empowerment program that Shawnte, Aleisha and a dozen other fifth- and six-graders have taken part in each Friday since January.
“We both decided we wanted to do it, we know how hard middle school can be for girls,” Rosenbaum said. “We?ve done a little bit of everything, from basketball to karaoke to dance to games, trying to find something that every girl is good at. We want them to feel comfortable in their own skin before they go to high school because they are going to face a lot of difficult decisions at that point.”
A $250,000 project is funded by The Associated, a federation of Jewish community nonprofits and a $90,000 grant this year from the San Francisco-based Helen Diller Family Foundation. As part of “CSI: Baltimore,” the fellows are responsible for designing, implementing and recruiting other schoolmates for monthly volunteer opportunities such as leading a basketball clinic at a Baltimore City elementary school or doing oral histories and scrapbooking with the elderly or performing mini-theater workshops with kids at the Ronald McDonald or Hackerman-Patz House.
The high school fellows, selected through an application process each year, also participate in monthly leadership development seminars that will culminate with a community service trip to Israel. There they will volunteer with their teen counterparts in Baltimore?s sister city of Ashkelon.
It seems to be making an impact at Fallstaff, just one of several volunteer efforts by the CSI students.
“It?s fun,” Aleisha said, while holding a basketball. “We share secrets and get to do stuff we don?t normally do. They encourage us to join teams or dance programs when we get to high school and to go to college.”
“They?re kind of like nice older sisters,” Shawnte said.
