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Uptown Arts Program Preps Kids for College and Beyond

By Carolina Pichardo | August 10, 2016 4:59pm
 Growth Development Services, Inc. (GDS) is using open mics, poetry and art to prepare kids for college.
Growth Development Services, Inc. (GDS) is using open mics, poetry and art to prepare kids for college.
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WASHINGTON HEIGHTS — A longtime local youth organization is kicking off a fundraising campaign to add more of the stuff local teens need, including yoga, arts and college-readiness programs — as part of its plan to revamp its mission.

The Growth Development Services, Inc. (GDS), founded in 1986, with a focus on peer leadership and teaching self-advocacy, is evolving based on what’s needed, according to its founder and director, Gary Altheim. The group is adding open mics and is planning to team up with local artists to paint wall murals.

“We’re combining our model of advocacy with the arts,” Altheim said, adding that they are bringing in more of the tools that teens need to prepare for life in order to focus on college-readiness and how to get people in the community ready for a career.

GDS, which started as a summer camp from the South Bronx, before moving to Fort Washington Avenue Armory on 168 Fort Washington Ave. in 2002, teamed up this summer with Inwood Community Services’ (ICS) Summer Youth Employment Program to work with 10 young adults, between the ages of 16 to 24.

The students, as part of their work for the summer, researched a local high school and found that the graduation rate was 55 percent, with only 9 percent of those students went on to graduate college.

“We need to focus on that,” Altheim said. “Why is that? It’s an intense need based on lack of college-readiness.”

Altheim said GDS provides students the support they need to not only finish college, but also go on to establish great careers.

Among its alums are 21-year-old Melggi Luciano, who arrived from the Dominican Republic less than two years ago and is currently attending Bronx Community College, and 19-year-old Gisette Paez, now studying criminal justice at SUNY Plattsburgh, he said.

"I think this program mostly is helping me improve my English, and also now, I know I have to be doing things and exactly in the times that I have to do it," said Luciano. 

“The program has helped me expand and see the bigger picture,” said Paez, adding that the program helped her navigate the confusing financial aid application process, as well as putting her into a good mindset to pick a major and establish her career. 

Without that feedback, she said, many high schoolers either don't get to college, or end up there without the tools to succeed.

"Even if you get to college, you get there and don't know how to afford college and things like that," she said. 

The students wrap up the summer session with an open mic show on Thursday, Aug. 11 from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. where participants will demonstrate what they’ve learned in the summer program. The show will also kick off the organization’s fundraising campaign, Altheim said.