GRANT TO JUVENILE OFFICE FUNDS PROGRAM FOR MINORITY YOUTHS

Sheldon Tyler is a man of vision.

Tyler sees Cape Girardeau's minority youths so involved in recreational and educational activities -- for the betterment of themselves and the city -- that they have little time left to do anything other than study, eat and sleep.

Tyler was recently put in charge of the design and implementation of youth services programming for the community under the auspices of a $25,000-plus Minority Youth Services Project grant awarded to the local juvenile office by the Missouri Department of Public Safety. The yearly grant is renewable for up to three years.

As a former schoolteacher at the Juvenile Detention Center in Cape Girardeau, Tyler took a special interest in the kids he was seeing -- sometimes repeatedly.

"We were seeing an inordinate amount of minority youth either being referred to the juvenile office, otherwise detained by law enforcement or involved in violent crimes," Tyler said."We knew we had to do something to keep these kids busy; to keep them off the streets."

Minority youths make up about 8 percent of the population in Cape Girardeau. Of that number, 25 percent are currently in the juvenile court system; 33 percent have been detained at one time or another for committing a crime or for an act of delinquency; and 46 percent of those who have been referred or are currently being detained are accused of committing some sort of violent act such as robbery, assault, rape or murder.

When Tyler was teaching at the detention center, he had limited access to the kids who were referred to the facility.

"When they left the center, that was it -- sometimes I never saw them again," Tyler said. "There was no follow up; I couldn't do anything to help them once they got out."

So Tyler, with the help of several volunteers from just about every walk of life in the community, is currently engineering a series of programs, activities and community projects in which youths can become involved, if for nothing else than to keep them off the streets where some are apt to get into trouble.

"The general plan is that we're going to bombard them with fun things to do," Tyler said. "We're trying to come up with several diverse programs so there's something for everyone."

Already, May Greene School has hopped aboard Tyler's bandwagon, allotting its facilities one night a week for basketball, volleyball and track-and-field activities after school. Now Tyler has set his sights on the L.J. Schultz middle school, where there are currently no minority staff or faculty employed.

"Another thing we really want to get started -- maybe at Schultz (school) -- is a rap session for minority kids," Tyler said. "We want to give these kids an opportunity to vent their frustrations or to appreciate their heritage and who they really are.

"We see some black students trying to disassociate themselves from the white masses," he said. "We want to weave out serious problems, which may be racial in nature, from just run-of-the-mill student problems."

Tyler also wants to see minority kids get involved with things they normally would not be exposed to like gymnastics, badminton, golf and tennis.

Under the grant, Tyler hopes to develop a "Kids Who Care" program wherein students can perform civic works for the benefit of the community.

"When juveniles are placed in detention, they have to do community work as part of their punishment," Tyler explained. "We want them to see how personally rewarding it can be to do good things for the community; to help their neighbors."

Kids Who Care would be aimed primarily at young people in seventh grade and older. Tyler would hope to take groups around the city, to help out at churches, to rake leaves for the city or to do other "odd jobs" to clean up the community.

In the long run, Tyler hopes to get children ages 5-17 involved with each other, positive adult role models and the community at large.

One of those role models is Louis Haynes, a realtor in Cape Girardeau who sought out Tyler to help him with the designing of the programs -- particularly the rap sessions at area schools for minorities.

"I want to help minority children raise their self-image," Haynes said. "They need to know about themselves, to heighten their self-worth and to have pride in who they are as a person and as a member of their race.

"When children begin to make choices in their lives, they should do it based on their morals; not on race or economic status," he said. "If we can make kids feel good about themselves, we can move them on to another plane of reason and thought."

Tyler and Haynes hope to someday include white students in the rap sessions, to allow the exchange of ideas and beliefs between the two groups.

"I've come to find that there is often more than one right answer to a situation," Haynes said. "Children should be given the right to voice their opinions, but at the same time they should begin a dialogue with a group that they might misunderstand."

Tyler wants to get local police officers involved with as many of the activities as possible.

"A lot of these kids grow up thinking the police are their enemy and have a very adversarial attitude toward police officers," Tyler said. "Police officers are our friends, and we need to let our children see that and teach them to believe they can depend on a police officer for help."

Another notion Tyler has is a mentoring program for minority students, as well as making free tutoring services available to them.

"The success of all these proposed programs depends on our volunteers," Tyler said. "I'm a can-do man; that's why they put me in charge of this grant. But there's only so much I can do."