[Original names, locations, and numbers have been redacted for client privacy]

Naheed Ali, MD, PhD

Southernville Community Center Information

Mission: The Southernville Community Center is a group of volunteers whose goal is to help Southernville's teens, adults, and families improve their health, education, human welfare, and opportunities.

Overall Objectives

  1. To provide youth and adults with educational, recreational, cultural, health, and lifelong learning opportunities.
  2. To provide educational opportunities for adults and elders.
  3. To ensure that no one goes hungry in Southernville or the neighboring communities.

General Objectives

  1. To provide 75 adolescents from grade school through high school with regular weekly recreational and cultural activities, an additional 50 adults with recreational and cultural programs, and 300 children and adults with health education and services.
  2. To improve the competency of 60 Southernville adults by providing English as a Second Language (ESL), G.E.D., and life skills training.
  3. To provide a low-cost food program (as well as an emergency food program for those in need) to roughly 725 households per month.

History

The Southernville Community Center was founded in 1965 as Metropolitan Outreach to provide food, emergency help, referrals, clothing, and bus tokens to the Stapleton Houses Public Housing community [1].

When the Southernville Housing Authority demolished Stapleton Homes in 1990, Stapleton Outreach expanded two previous efforts to encompass the entire community and "picked up the slack" from a former Catholic Charities initiative. Southernville Community Center (SCC) is now an organization that continues to provide food and emergency assistance.

The Southernville Trust provided SCC a grant in 2001 to identify the community's health and educational needs and develop programs to address these needs. The hypertension and heart disease [[2]](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30969622/#:~:text=Hypertensive heart disease refers to,functional changes in the myocardium.) control campaign was launched in 2002 thanks to support from the Southernville Community Foundation. English as a Second Language, G.E.D., Homework Assistance, and Youth Leadership were also established in 2002. In 2003, the Southernville Police Department abandoned a building at 45th Avenue and Grant Street and handed it to the SCC for educational, cultural, and recreational purposes.

Current Programs, Activities, And Achievements

Education And Life Skills For Adults: The Family Resource Center services assist families in developing excellent parenting skills, expanding their occupational abilities, and engaging in constructive community and cultural activities [3]. Roughly 25 adults attend monthly workshops to learn how to keep and balance a checkbook, budget, and plan for purchasing cost-effective and healthy groceries. SCC has adopted GED, English, and Spanish as Second Language programs.

Foods And Clothing: The Southernville Community Center offers a food basket program to low-income and disadvantaged neighborhood members. Food is acquired from the Food Bank of the Rockies and provided monthly to as many as 500 families. Moreover, clothing and household goods are available.

Programs For Youth: SCC also offers youth education, ceramics, dance, art programs, athletic activities, a homework aid program, summer employment opportunities for youth, and a leadership program. It is also the location of the G-COOL youth leadership program, which serves 30 8- to 13-year-olds.