Sevananda's Community Change:
East Atlanta Kids Club

"Sevananda Co-Options Newsletter"
January 2001

Sometimes the street where you live can be fun. Sometimes it can be boring. Other times it can be full of conflict, especially at those times when your parents aren't around. It's nice to have another place to go where you can count on having fun and feeling safe and good about yourself.

That's the idea behind the East Atlanta Kids Club, a nonprofit mentoring and enrichment program for at-risk children ages 7 to 12 who live in East Atlanta, a rapidly growing intown neighborhood. The kids club meets twice a week at the Brownwood Park Recreational Center, just a few blocks south of the bustling village area. There, kids play games, create art, bake cookies, dance, play ping pong and foosball, have contests about math, spelling, and recent news events, and engage in activities of their own invention.

East Atlanta Kids Club is Sevananda's Community Change Partner for January. To make a tax-deductible donation to the group, use one of the coupons available at each register. Sevananda increases all donations by 25 percent. On Saturdays, once or twice a month, the club goes on a field trip where kids can get their ya-yas out, appreciate something about the culture or the environment in which they live, or learn something about our shared history. Recent trips have included a performance of the Urban Nutcracker by Ballethnic Dance Company; ice skating at Centennial Park, seeing "African Tales of Wisdom" at the Center for Puppetry Arts, and hiking in the north Georgia mountains.

The kids club is funded at present by small grants from community partners and churches. Activities are led by about a dozen volunteers, some of whom live in the neighborhood, and some of whom come to the club via Hands On Atlanta. The club is always seeking more kids, more volunteers, and more support, which comes in all sorts of ways.

Last year, local artist R. Land worked with the kids to create a series of paintings of fantastic earthly creatures. The kids club proudly displayed those paintings at the Heaping Bowl and Brew, a local eatery, and sold every one of them.

Last summer, the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs arranged for a performance artist, Wanda Jean Woodall, to lead the kids in creative writing and performance art exercises for six weeks. Woodall, an East Atlanta resident, helped craft the rap song and dance routine that the kids performed at the East Atlanta Village Strut. She marched and celebrated with the kids when they won the trophy for Best Kid Strut.

The kids are learning about what it means to work as a team, to trust one another, and to help each other.  They do simply fun things, like going trick-or-treating together, and they also volunteer as a group in other communities. In 1998, on Hands On Atlanta Day, the kids club helped plant flowers at Grant Park. Last year, they painted a mural at a homeless shelter in Southwest Atlanta.

The East Atlanta Kids Club is always looking for another challenge, another way to have fun, and more members. If you are interested in getting involvd with the kids club, please call club coordinator Jill Sieder at 404-635-0795, or send an email to jsieder@mindspring.com.