THERE'S SOMETHING TO DO AFTER SCHOOL

17-YEAR-OLD ORGANIZES CARE FOR CHILDREN

FRAMINGHAM -- Claudia Rodriguez first saw the problem while visiting her mother, who works at the YMCA day-care center for 2- to 5-year-olds.

As the youngsters banged on drums and sang songs in the brightly lit center, the older children of the surrounding low-income housing project looked in the windows, sometimes begging to come in, otherwise simply staring.

''It made Claudia so sad to see all the older kids with nothing to do,'' her mother, Wilma Rodriguez, recounted. ''She wanted to give the older ones something fun to do.''

So Claudia, a 17-year-old junior at Framingham High School, started an afterschool program for older children that she called Esperanza -- Spanish for ''hope.'' She persuaded the Framingham Housing Authority to support her with supplies, and more than a dozen high school students have agreed to volunteer their time.

Since the fall, Rodriguez and her volunteers have organized and operated an hourlong program that has drawn nearly every 6- to 12-year-old from the 125-family housing project on Monday afternoons. The volunteers meet weekly at the school to organize new activities for their 30 young charges, offering drawing, reading, collage-making and game-playing options.

''The kids are literally lined up outside,'' said Elizabeth O'Grady, deputy director of the Framingham Housing Authority. ''They're banging on the door to get in.''

Rodriguez's program, like hundreds around the country, is filling ''a tremendous need, a tremendous unmet need,'' according to Beth M. Miller, a research associate at the School-Age Child Care Project at Wellesley College. Among the children of working mothers across the country, nearly 15 percent of those between 5 and 12 years old are unsupervised when they come home, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington-based research group.

For lower-income families, the lack of afterschool care presents a more serious problem; their children are more likely to have fewer recreational options and to live in dangerous neighborhoods, according to authorities.

''Those children are then more susceptible to peer pressure, more likely to be drawn into drugs and smoking and risky behavior,'' Miller said.

Laura Palmer, who brings her daughters, ages 4 and 10, to Esperanza, said she prizes the interaction her children have with Rodriguez and the other volunteers, who present a positive alternative to the pregnant, smoking teen- agers who live in the neighborhood.

''They're such good role models for my children,'' Palmer said. ''My daughter sees that you can go through puberty and you don't have to become a mom.''

On one recent Monday, Palmer's 10-year-old, named Laura like her mother, was seated at a table overflowing with magazines and balls of bright yarn in the Housing Authority's community room.

The theme this day is of dreams, drawn from the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Laura and most of the 25 other children are making collages by cutting out magazine pictures to illustrate their dreams.

On white cardboard cut into the shape of a cloud, Laura pastes a picture of the music group Salt 'n' Pepa, a red sports car and a pony.

''I want to be a singer and I want a red Ferrari and I want a pony,'' she says, flipping her tight braids to one side. ''I want to go to college, too, but I can't find a picture.''

In the large room abuzz with activity, Rodriguez is moving rapidly from one table to the next, speaking alternately in English and Spanish to the volunteers and their young charges. Dressed neatly in black jeans and a brown vest, the young woman exudes enthusiasm, confidence and kindness.

''Oh, you don't want to make a dream anymore,'' she responds to a 6-year- old girl, leading her away from the collage table toward one covered with games. ''Come over here and you can play Chinese checkers.''

Meanwhile, Colleen Holt, a pony-tailed 10-year-old, is at the collage table asking for another cardboard cutout. She has already filled one white cloud with pictures of horses, cars, a dog, a wedding and a palace, but she says she has still more dreams to illustrate.

Holt, who has lived at the low-income apartment complex for nine years, has taken it upon herself to round up her friends in the neighborhood, knocking on their doors and leading them to Esperanza every week.

''When I'm not here, I'm watching TV,'' she said. ''This is more fun.''

For Rodriguez, an athlete and honor student who hopes to be an urban planner one day, running the day-care program has meant sacrificing some of her favorite activities, such as track. But she says that the time devoted to organizing and running the program is well worth it when she sees how much the children enjoy the program.

''We all have so much fun here every week,'' she said. ''It's so worth all of our time.''

Her mother, who emigrated from Mexico and was employed as a factory worker in her early years in this country, said she is fully supportive of her daughter's involvement in the day-care center. She has always encouraged her children to be ''good people, to go to sleep having done good in the world,'' but she cannot take full credit for Claudia's enterprise, her mother said.

''Some kids are born with something special,'' she said, ''and we can just open the window a little wider.''


Home � Jobs � Resumes � The Hunt
Feedback � About Help Wanted � Back to Boston.Com