{"id":252,"date":"2018-01-18T08:26:12","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T13:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kars4kidsgrants.org\/our-grantees\/?p=252"},"modified":"2024-08-26T07:11:44","modified_gmt":"2024-08-26T11:11:44","slug":"third-street-community-center-kids-come-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kars4kidsgrants.org\/our-grantees\/third-street-community-center-kids-come-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Third Street Community Center: Where Kids Come in First"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Third Street Community Center<\/a>\u00a0(TSCC) fills an important role in the lives of San Jose children from low-income homes. These are children without food security\u2014children who may not even have basic school supplies. The parents of these children work long hours and tend to have little time with their kids in the hours after school.<\/p>\n

Third Street Community Center gives the children a safe place where they are mentored and fed, and get help with their homework. It\u2019s a place kids can go for enrichment. And it\u2019s just the sort of thing Kars4Kids wants to support, so support them we did, with a small grant.<\/p>\n

We spoke to Third Street Community Center Program Supervisor Ashley Diaz to learn more about what is on offer at TSCC:<\/p>\n

Kars4Kids: Does San Jose, where TSCC operates, have a particularly large population of disadvantaged children in relation to other locations?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

TSCC: Yes, many of the families we serve are from the low-income community. With this being a factor, most of our students are disadvantaged from education and a stable household. By this I mean, many parents cannot afford the expenses here in San Jose and most of the time are low on food, school supplies for their children, and much more.\u00a0 This prevents parents from helping their children out in their studies because they are almost always working and do not have much in the way of family interactions.<\/p>\n

\"TSCC<\/p>\n

Kars4Kids: Tell us about ASAP, (After School Academic Program). How many hours a day\/week does this program<\/a> run? What is it like? Is there a specific ratio of staff to children? What are the ages of the participants?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

TSCC:\u00a0 Well, our program is available to students from grades 1st<\/sup>-5th<\/sup> (age range: 6-11) in order to enhance their academics. In our program, the majority of students are considered ELL (English Language Learners), so we try to help out every student to improve in their literacy. Apart from that, we also offer other subjects such as STEM, where they\u2019re able to demonstrate their passions for engineering. And lastly, we also have an enrichment portion where we can create different arts and crafts activities as well as physical education and dance.<\/p>\n

We usually run for about three and a half hours with a staff of about five and about 42 students in our program. We sure have a handful, but as a team we work hand-in-hand. Especially with the help of our volunteers that we receive from San Jose State University and Santa Clara University to do their community service hours, they are able to serve as tutors and mentors to the children in our program. And a lot of the times our volunteers grow a strong attachment to the kids and come back to volunteer even without needing the hours for school. In some cases, we also have some volunteers return as part of our staff.<\/p>\n