Part Three: Building on a Rocky Foundation -- The Pico Collaborative Takes Its First Tentative Steps

By Teresa Rochester

In mid-January, Ed Bell sat down with his video camera and watched as a series of idyllic images glowed on the small monitor.

The videotape, taken six months earlier, showed more than two dozen tough-looking teenagers and young adults from the Pico Neighborhood laughing and paddling in a rowboat across the screen.

The weekend camping trip in the San Bernardino Mountains -- which was organized by the newly formed Pico Collaborative -- marked the first time many of the youth had been in the wilderness.

"It blew them away," said Bell, whose Parachute Program was one of three groups that formed the unprecedented biracial collaborative funded by the City. "They were so excited about what was going on.

"It's stuff like that that we did, man," said Bell, who works for the City's Water Department. "Those kids had so much fun. We could make a difference. I just wonder what it would be like if we were up and running for a year."

Three months after the camping trip, the beleaguered collaborative would see its City funding yanked and the doors of its Youth Center, which had opened in February, closed after approximately $40,000 in renovations.

But just months earlier, the room at the Santa Monica Christian Center on Pico Boulevard had been bustling with activity. The directors of the three groups that made up the collaborative -- the Parachute Program, Proyecto Adelanta and Barrios Unidos -- were coming up with programs and beginning to forge alliances with established Santa Monica institutions like the local Red Cross and Saint John's Health Center.

For months, Bell and the other two directors, Oscar De la Torre and Manuel "Manny" Lares, mapped out activities with the help of 16 Latino and black teenagers hired in February as youth planners at a little more than $10 an hour. Guided by Community Partners, which was hired by the City to help start up the collaborative, they hammered out ambitious program plans.

Each organization focused on a particular set of services it would deliver. De la Torre's Proyecto Adelante planned to offer support groups for women and men and counseling services in partnership with Saint John's Health Center, which hired a part time counselor to work at the center and at the hospital addressing the needs of youth and their families.

De la Torre also proposed a recording center for the Underground Hip Hop Project that would provide a positive avenue for youth to express themselves through music. Proyecto Adelante went as far as buying equipment and lining up a local music producer to train the young people to use the equipment.

Bell's Parachute Program would offer prison outreach services. Under the plan, the group would advise youth on how to dress for court and help them navigate the criminal justice system. Those incarcerated would receive regular visits from collaborative workers who also would serve as mentors when the individual was released from jail or prison.

Along with the services Santa Monica Barrios Unidos already offers (including after school programs for high school students), Lares proposed a plan to develop job training for Pico youth.

Modeled after a nationally known program, Lares' plan would not only provide basic job skills, it also would match young people with a case worker who would assess the youths strengths and weaknesses, help them find a job and monitor their performance.

Lares, who built a partnership with Playa Vista Jobs, said his program would seek to partner with a variety of businesses and would reimburse the companies for half of the cost to train the new employee.

"What we're trying to do is create opportunities in the business community where there might not have been opportunities," said Lares. "It's a great strategy."

In addition to formulating plans, the collaborative's leaders began sponsoring events, such as the rafting trip in the San Bernardino Mountains.

The collaborative brought in American Red Cross volunteers to hold CPR and first aid classes for the teens free of charge. In addition, the Red Cross set up information booths at two events staged by the collaborative, including a block party. The organization also handed out toys and donated several pieces of furniture to the collaborative.

The National Conference for Community and Justice, which de la Torre had worked with during a previous summer, held anger management and cultural diversity workshops.

In May the center served as the site for a Mother's Day brunch, with the teens cooking and serving breakfast to their mothers. The Youth Center also served as the focal point for a Dia de los Muertes celebration.

But if the fledgling collaborative had ambitious plans, City officials and their consultants worried it might have gotten ahead of itself. They also expressed concerns that the three directors, while enthusiastic and well intentioned, may have lacked the necessary experience to pull the programs off.

After all, while the collaborative was offering select programs and services and providing a safe haven for the Pico Neighborhood's most at risk youth, it still was without a board of directors, its program plans were still incomplete and its budget was still not finalized.

"Most [organizations] have absolutely no money to begin with," said Jan Kern, whose group, Community Partners, serves as an incubator for startup non-profits. "They have to plan and then they get the money, so this was a little out of sync."

In addition, behind the enthusiasm and the veneer of unity presented by the collaborative's leaders, trouble had started to brew and tension was mounting. By July services had been suspended as organizers missed critical deadlines and problems began to surface over the lease of the space at the church.

To address the growing problems, the collaborative needed to shift gears.

"During the planning process we were developing strong momentum, learning, working and developing our projects," said Lares. "We were working with the high school graduates. The kids on the street. What's sad is we lost momentum. When you lose momentum you lose credibility. The City deserves harsh reprimand from us."

"We moved our focus from providing services to program plans," Bell said.

"I think we took on too much trying to supervise the youth," de la Torre added.

Youth and Family Day, scheduled for August 2000, was to have been a day of celebration, a time to unveil a host of new services crafted for the young people and introduce the youth planners and collaborative organizers to the community.

But August came and went. Instead of celebrating their achievements, de la Torre, Bell and Lares had fallen way behind schedule, their program plans long over due to the City that had granted them $350,000 to launch the services.

What's more, the three men were embroiled in ever-growing problems as tensions continued to mount.

Tomorrow: An inside look at what went wrong.