An ambitious new youth center, Casa Familiar Youth Center, opened in San Ysidro, thanks to the cooperation of the Villa Nueva housing complex, the San Diego Padres, San Diego State University, Casa Familiar, county government, and other organizations. The youth center is housed in what had once been Villa Nueva’s property-management office at 3604 Beyer Boulevard.
Along with giving the area’s students a much-needed place to hang out after school, the center offers internet access with both Macintosh and Windows computers, leadership programs, interactive fitness games on a PS3, a community garden, and a service designed to transition students from the local high schools into university life. In all, the center offers some twenty-five programs to help local students.
The San Diego Padres showed up in force for the bilingual ribbon-cutting ceremony to offer their support and to donate seven PS3 Play-Stations. The PlayStations include several interactive video games promoting physical activity, such as the baseball program that members of the team played with some of the fifty students who attended.
A member of the Padres public relations department remembered the previous youth center in San Ysidro, which the city closed several years ago. “I grew up on Del Sur Boulevard,” she said, “and if it hadn’t been for the help I got at the center I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I have today.” With that lesson in mind, only one of the PlayStations will remain at the center: the others will be awarded in December to the six students who have contributed the most in the center’s “Young Leaders / Jóvenes Líderes” programs.
Programs under the “Young Leaders / Jóvenes Líderes” rubric teach leadership skills through civic engagement, community service, and next-step thinking. Students are encouraged to find a social need and then fill it in a way that amplifies their individual effort. “Let’s say a student notices that litter in their neighborhood needs to be picked up,” Catalina Trejo, the director of these programs, offers as an example. “They don’t just go out and pick up the litter. They figure out how to organize their neighborhood and pick the litter up as a community.”
Some five hundred students have already benefited from “Young Leaders / Jóvenes Líderes” programs during their first three years in operation. The opening of the youth center affords these programs a permanent home and a chance to meet a growing demand. Currently the high schools in the San Ysidro and Sweet-water districts require thirty hours of community service for graduation: at the youth center these students can find existing service programs as well as the opportunity to design their own.
Casa Azteca is another innovative offering at the youth center. This program hopes to encourage both interest and success in higher education within an underserved community. Bárbara Fierro, the youth center’s coordinator, said the idea came about when San Diego State University noticed high drop-out rates among its students from the southwestern part of the county, particularly those from San Ysidro.
Casa Azteca is an outreach program for the local high schools, it invites seniors with a grade point average of 3.0 or better to familiarize themselves with the university atmosphere before they apply for admission. As a support program for SDSU’s southernmost freshmen, it offers a satellite campus with computers, tutoring, and study groups close to home.
More information about the youth center and its programs is available from the administrative offices of Casa Familiar, 619-428-1115.