Annual Report 2012 - Johnson Park Centerjohnsonparkcenter.org/assets/pdf/Annual-Report-JPC-2012.pdf · officials. And, when the ribbons were cut, attendees brought “green” housewarming

JCTOD Outreach, Inc.

doing business as

Community Development Special Needs Housing Nutrition Recreation Mentoring & Advocacy

Annual Report 2012

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A letter from our founder

Dear Honored Member of the JPC Family;

After 17 years of trying to bring change to Johnson Park Center, the thing

I’m most humbled by is the amount of support we’ve gotten from the

community, and how many partners have come on board to help us. Those

partners and this community are the reasons good things continue to happen

here, in an area that was once written off as too far gone to grow again.

When I founded JPC, I chose the color green to represent this agency

because green is the color of “growth”. In 2012, our growth continued. We

saw a formal client,bow Mrs. Lori Cruz, get married in the park during our

week of celebration. We also saw the Oneida County Summer Work program

contribute more than 50 low-income teenagers to get experience working in

Johnson Park this summer. JPC was also able to open a program to give

security deposits to homeless people looking for rapid re-housing. JPC

unveiled another program to educate and re-integrate ex-offenders into

work and society in 2012. For the first time in its history, JPC began e-

mailing regular issues of the JPC Express, a newsletter focused on keeping

our partners and friends in the loop and highlighting all of the good things that are happening here. And, of

course, we had the unveiling of the first LEED Platinum Certified residential homes in the area in the beautiful

new JPA V buildings that were finished in 2012.

Unfortunately, we lost a vital member of the JPC

family as one of our first residents, Ms. Angela Carter,

was laid to rest in 2012—JPC hosted post-burial

services for family and friends and her character and

inspiration will long out-last her life here at JPC and

our hearts will remain heavy with her rememberance.

While our work is far from done, this Annual Report is

an overview of what we’ve accomplished in 2012 and

we hope you, as our friend, take ownership of some of

this real change. In the meantime, our work is not

done and we look forward to rolling up our sleeves

together and fulfilling the commitment JPC made to

this neighborhood over 17 years ago: Positive Change

is here to stay.

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Community evelopment

JPC continued to change not

just lives, but the look and outlook of the

community.

Johnson Park Center finally opened

long-anticipated, new JPA V housing for

single, chronically homeless women.

The project was unique because of its value to local urban development, to environmental technology as

well as the value to the homeless population it serves. The geo-thermal wells for heating and cooling,

the solar panels for electricity and the state-of-the art air circulation system was the talk of the summer.

The buildings eventually earned the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum

certification, making them the only residential buildings in the area to earn that distinction. This project

proved that a distressed neighborhood and people down on their luck didn’t have to settle for second-

best, but rather, could be innovators and example-setters.

The unveiling of these new buildings came with a great deal of fanfare, with news coverage and two,

separate grand opening ceremonies that attracted some of the highest-ranking state, local and federal

officials. And, when the ribbons were cut, attendees brought “green” housewarming gifts to the women

who moved in.

In 2012, JPC volunteers continued the tradition of asking our residents to volunteer their time in order to

keep our community clean and in shape. Ms. Kimberly Wilson was awarded the fifth annual Community

Service work for her outstanding contribution to serving the community through Johnson Park Center.

We worked hard to keep our promise to the mayor that if the city invests in our neighborhood, that we

would work to keep that investment up.

JPA V

Cleaning Up Right!

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Nutrition

JPC is committed to nurturing our residents

and the community at-large with healthy food

choices and an effort to fight hunger.

Food Pantry

The Johnson Park Center Food Pantry gave

away enough food for more than 76,000

meals to roughly 8,500 individuals in 2012.

Those numbers are way up, an increase of

about 20,000 meals over what was given out

the year before. This increase is largely due

to special giveaways, an increased need and

community awareness of the service, and a robust supply provided by the Food Bank of Central New

York and the Community Foundation of Herkimer and Oneida Counties, which gave $15,000 to help fill

the Pantry this year.

Preparing Dinners

Volunteers from JPC served meals to the children and adults of the community each night its Youth

Center was open. JPC’s various feeding programs, including its Drop-in Youth Enrichment Center and

summer feeding programs, gave approximately 20,000 servings of food to hungry people in the

community . The organization provided JPC with a grant to expand and enhance its Youth Center

feeding in the summer.

Community Garden

The Johnson Park Center Community gardened is maintained and utilized by JPC youth, residents and

community volunteers. Besides providing free and healthy vegetables it also helps stock the Food Pantry

and provides residents and community members with the skill to produce low-cost food on their own.

Food Giveaways a hit!

This year’s successful kick-off of JPC’s Food Give Away attracted

more than 650 people in the community, many of them stood in

line in the sticky heat and the pouring rain to participate in the free

Food Giveaway. On the first day, JPC gave away vegetables,

meats, pasta, rice and healthy snacks. However, because we were

able to raise so much food, JPC still had more food to distribute.

So, JPC held two Food Give Away events this year, and rounded

up volunteers and staff to get the word out on a day’s notice. All

told, JPC served more than 1,200 people in the community.

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Recreation K.I.N.D. Kickball

Tournament

Johnson Park Center hosted its

inaugural Kicking In New Dreams

Kickball Tournament. This

tournament was a great success and it

featured five teams and over 60

participants including children from

the community as well as Johnson

Park Apartments families. The

fundraising, coordination, coaching

and planning of this tournament was

the result of JPA women stepping up to volunteer. By playing kickball, the kids learned the discipline to

follow rules, teamwork and leadership skills and the responsibility to make it to their games on time.

The tournaments focus though was on goal-setting. The kids were asked to come up with goals that we

can hold them accountable to before playing. The belief is, if a child is able to articulate positive goals

than they are more likely to achieve them, and an agency such as JPC can better work to hole the

children accountable to them.

Diverse recreational opportunities

The recreational events in 2012 included holiday parties for JPA residents and community children, a

trip to Six Flags, field trips for JPA teens to local sporting events and parks, a self defense class for JPA

women, new women’s social groups, scrabble tournaments, trips for teenagers and families to local

sporting events and more. JPC’s robust partnerships in the community allowed women, families and

children to take free holiday pictures together, receive tutoring for school work, participate in arts and

crafts classes and engage in various activities that made living here and coming to Johnson Park a blast

for all.

Family Meetings / Teen outings

In 2012, JPC put an emphasis on at-risk families. One of the

strategies we developed is to give these families, particularly

those that have been recently reunited, opportunities to bond

over family games and outings. JPC has trained staff, ordered

board games and scheduled off-site activities that will allow

families to communicate, build structure and bond with one

another. Further, JPA teenagers were involved in the Teen Work

Experience program, a program that simulated a work

experience through volunteer hours to teach them proper

workplace conduct. The teens also went to various parks and

places throughout the community for recreational activities.

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Mentoring / Advocacy Johnson Park Center believes that self-

empowerment is learning to do things for

yourself. Therefore, JPC residents not

only benefit from a staff that advocates

for them, but they participate in the

process of advocating for the causes and

concerns that affect their lives. In

addition, JPC provides a diverse array of

role models for youth and residents who

mentor them in achieving their goals.

Geoffrey Canada

JPC took several of its residents to a speech given by Harlem Children’s Zone Founder Geoffrey

Canada. At the speech, Canada spoke about how communities can help transform the educational

experience for children and come together to rally for positive change. The Community Foundation put

on the event and they also asked JPC residents to take part in the advertising campaign to help sell the

event to the community. Some of our residents and neighborhood children were in commercials, posed

for pictures and helped to spread the word about changing our community and this important event..

Positive Role Models

JPC is also determined to provide mentoring

and positive role models for its youth and

residents. JPC has an active relationship with

local colleges and SUNYIT and Hamilton

College students are frequent guests as

volunteers and homework tutors at JPC’s Youth

Center. In addition, JPC staff uses its Youth

Voice Initiative students to provide peer-level

leadership while learning to be leaders and role

models themselves. Finally, JPC applies a

number of strategies to help its women and

family members learn to be leaders in the JPC

family and in the community at large. Some of

the things we did in 2012 included allowing the

women to share their stories and advice at well

attended events such as United Way

presentations, the ribbon-cutting for JPA V ,

city public hearings and during Utica Police Department training sessions held at Johnson Park Center.

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Special Needs Housing

Single women’s program

Single women often come to JPC with troubled pasts

and the hope for security and stability. A good

example of this is one woman who came to JPC in

2012. Before she would agree to stay there, this

woman, we’ll call Jane Doe, told her Oneida County

social worker that she wanted to check out the place

first. She was looking for security. When her two

adult daughters came to visit her after she moved in,

they had the same concern. The daughters remember

the days early morning walks meant danger for their

mother. They know of ex-boyfriends stalking her

neighborhood once she left them, and they know those men are still around. So, to re-assure them, in the

days they stayed in town to visit, Jane asked them to wake up and walk with her while she cleaned the

neighborhood. As she walked, she pointed to security cameras, introduced them to staff and residents

that were now watching over her. They saw that when she needed a ride somewhere, staff watched her

go in and was waiting when she came out. Her children approved and Jane is thriving in her new home.

Women & Children’s program

The JPA Women & Children’s program saw much of its success in its reunification services. Since the

death of a close friend, one mom began to abuse drugs and the parenting skills she had were useless in

the face of addiction. She lost custody of her daughter and came to Johnson Park Center at the mandate

of the local court system. This mother had pictures of her daughter in the Emergency Shelter and wanted

to rekindle the relationship they had built before drugs. She volunteered to help children at the JPC

Youth Enrichment Drop-in Center with their homework and her interactions with them made her more

anxious to get her own child back. After not using drugs for six months and regularly attending

appointments, she earned visitation, then custody. A particular aspect of the program that the court’s

considered is that she would be regularly drug tested.