Engaging with the community is no small task when that “community” is spread across 4,000 square miles, comprises nearly 10 million residents, is among the most culturally diverse in the nation and ranks as the 11th largest economy in the world. So when UCLA’s Center for Community Partnerships set out to develop a vehicle for community engagement, director Franklin D. Gilliam Jr. knew the Los Angeles area was fertile ground for a model program of enrichment and solutions-oriented collaboration.

UCLA in LA, the center’s operational arm, has forged innovative and fruitful relationships between the university and nearly 100 community-based organizations in the greater Los Angeles area since its inception in September of 2002. An essential component of UCLA in LA is its Community Partnership Grants program, funded with a $2-million grant from the UCLA Foundation. Each year, the center awards between $800,000 and $1 million in grants to campus and nonprofit organizations that focus on children, youth and families; economic development; or arts and culture. It’s important to note, however, that the grants program is just one aspect of the center’s efforts. Other activities focus on fostering a campus culture that values community engagement, convening community leaders to discuss current issues facing greater Los Angeles residents and applying UCLA’s mission of research, teaching and service to issues of community interest.

Sustainability is the key to the partnerships established through the grants program. “Our goal is to avoid drive-by research and instead look for opportunities to provide long-term engagement,” says Gilliam, a professor of political science. “This is the only way to truly address the needs and issues facing our community today. We’re not about quick fixes. We are about nurturing and sustaining.”

As in any partnership, UCLA collaborators — whether faculty, graduate students or staff — thrive just as much as their community partners. While nonprofit organizations benefit from the academic resources of the university, the campus partners are able to see firsthand how their research and service enhance the quality of life for area residents. Here, writers Susan Chapman M.F.A. ’01, Pamela Corante and Phil Hampton look at how some of these projects illustrate Gilliam’s vision of community engagement in action.

SING OUT

In the early 1930s, bluesman Thomas Dorsey, who went by the name “Georgia Tom,” suffered a great tragedy when his wife and new baby both died in childbirth. Long feeling the tug between playing in the clubs of Chicago and playing in the Christian church where he had his first musical experiences, Dorsey found solace in his piano and in composing sacred music. Among the most famous of his more than 400 compositions was “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.”

Dorsey would go on to coin the term “gospel music,” a style that blends church music, jazz and blues. He is credited with crystallizing gospel as an art form, and his adopted home city, Chicago, is renowned as one of gospel’s early centers. As African Americans in Chicago who were influenced by Dorsey and the musicians who followed him migrated west, particularly in the 1940s, L.A. burgeoned into one of gospel’s most important hubs.

The city’s status as a global center of gospel music, however, is seldom recognized. But a yearlong partnership between the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive and the Heritage Music Foundation (HMF) aims to reinforce Los Angeles’ standing as the place for gospel. The Gospel Archiving in Los Angeles (GALA) project — supported by a $38,000 grant — pairs the archive’s resources and expertise with HMF’s reputation in the gospel-music community to document and celebrate the city’s rich gospel history.

Says Margaret Pleasant Douroux, HMF’s founder and one of gospel’s leading composers and music educators: “[Gospel] music has passed through African-American culture without benefit of pen and pencil. Now it can be documented as the truly American art form that it is.”

Among the project’s key activities, says archivist John Vallier M.A. ’00, M.L.I.S. ’03, UCLA’s principal investigator for the partnership, is the planning for Gospel House, which will become the physical core for gospel in Los Angeles and home to the GALA archives.

GALA also will expand upon Los Angeles-based gospel and related music collections in the UCLA archive and at HMF, Vallier says. With the help of UCLA students and members of the broader community, GALA will make both audio and video recordings of gospel and gospel-related performances in and around the greater Los Angeles region. Preserving invaluable gospel collections will be another of the project’s components. The archive will assist HMF and others with gospel collections to preserve and increase access to already existing recordings that document gospel music in Los Angeles. In addition, the archive will host a Web server to make digital copies of gospel recordings available to members of the gospel and broader communities.

“This partnership is a great opportunity,” says Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje M.A. ’72, Ph.D. ’78, director of the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive. “As Dr. Douroux has often said, ‘Western classical music has Carnegie Hall; country music has the Grand Ole Opry; and rock music has its Hall of Fame. Gospel has nothing.’”

With GALA, however, gospel music could one day have it all in Los Angeles. — Susan Chapman

BREAKING THE CYCLE

Bobby Arias describes the young man with a mixture of fondness and pride: “He was wearing baggy pants, a bandana and an undershirt and shows up to work at a local Assemblymember’s office. Three weeks later, he’s wearing a suit and tie and handling telephone calls.”

Arias, president of CIS/Communities in Schools for the Los Angeles/San Fernando Valley Region, is relating one of the many success stories that have emerged from the UCLA/CIS Gang Youth Tutor/Mentor Project, which received a $22,300 partnership grant.

The lure of gang life, a deprived upbringing and violence in the home or neighborhood cause a sense of disenfranchisement from society. For many youth, this means performance and behavior problems in school. Enter Jorja Leap ’78, M.S.W. ’80, Ph.D. ’88, adjunct assistant professor in UCLA’s Department of Social Welfare. A veteran in working with violent youth and crisis, Leap’s work has taken her from Bosnia and Kosovo to Ground Zero and South Los Angeles.

“The problem in Los Angeles is that many kids can’t find a way out from a life of violence and gangs,” says Leap. “On the other end, we as individuals tend to be fairly isolated. I worry about my students. They’re brilliant and motivated but have no real-world experience. The program builds capacity.”

Leap’s UCLA students get a hands-on opportunity through the program to make a personal difference in the lives of youth. While enrolled in a two-quarter course, students are able to tutor and mentor youth on-site at CIS. Youth are referred to CIS through the probation department, school principals and sometimes school police. Leap oversees her students’ fieldwork and assures that every precaution is taken to ensure the comfort level of the students.

Each student mentor is paired with a youth from the CIS program and the two meet once a week. The UCLA students, in addition to providing assistance with schoolwork, serve as role models for youth who often have no positive adult influences in their lives.

A five-point philosophy is the guiding force of the program. The first point states that all children deserve a personal one-on-one relationship with a caring adult who, in Arias’ words, is “irrationally committed to a child’s well-being — ‘irrational’ because most rational adults would run the other way.” Arias affirms that the UCLA students more than fulfill this role.

The second and third points involve creating a safe place to learn and grow, and ensuring a healthy future. Most of the work for the UCLA students involves generating trust and credibility among the youth. Once this foundation is established, the youth are more receptive to advice, hence more likely to improve.

No program would be complete without an element of giving back to the community — the fourth point. Plenty of opportunities to give back are afforded the youth, as illustrated by the story of a young man, a hardened gang member, who went through the program and eventually left the street life. Now he returns to the center regularly to counsel others, telling his often-skeptical listeners, “I know what you are thinking because I was in your shoes once.”

Marketable skills for a job or career are critical, as stated in the final point. The tutor/mentor program prepares youth to participate in internship programs offered through CIS. Many of the internships have resulted in permanent positions for the participants.

“Programs don’t change kids, relationships do,” says Arias. “The UCLA students come here and often wonder if they’ll be able to transform the kids, because they come from such different backgrounds. But ultimately, the relationship transcends.” — Pamela Corante

A WISE CHOICE

When UCLA family-medicine physician Michael A. Rodriguez M.D. ’88 and the administrators of a Santa Monica-based nonprofit that aims to improve the quality of life for Los Angeles County seniors wanted to learn how to best educate elderly Latinos about the benefits of healthy living, they went straight to the source.

“We can’t solve problems that elderly Latinos face by staying in our offices at UCLA,” says Rodriguez, an associate professor specializing in the health-care needs of vulnerable populations. “We have to ask those we want to help what their views are. They have to have a say in what’s going on.”

Funded with a $30,000 grant, the Healthy Abuelos (Grandparents), Healthy Los Angeles project partners Rodriguez with WISE Senior Services to determine what obstacles aged Latinos may face in choosing healthy life-styles and accessing health and social services, and what messages and methods will be most effective in reaching them. Results will be used to develop an outreach campaign that encourages these seniors to make healthy life-style choices and link them to appropriate service providers.

It may seem like a common-sense approach to use the targets of a health-promotion campaign to help develop messages for that campaign. But the practice is not that common with seniors, says Nancy K. Hayes ’86, president and chief executive officer of WISE Senior Services.

Hayes says experience demonstrates that, in addition to language barriers for Spanish speakers seeking care from English-speaking health-care providers, Latino seniors in greater Los Angeles often have cultural values that impede healthy life-style choices. For example, many dishes popular in Latino cultures are cooked with lard, and cooks may be reluctant to vary from tradition in choosing healthier alternatives. In addition, some cultures may frown upon elderly women walking in the park or around the block for exercise. “Some of these seniors may find it’s very unusual for a woman this age to be walking around in sneakers,” Hayes says. “Or they can’t imagine eating something different than the rest of the family.”

Hayes and Rodriguez emphasize that Latinos are not homogenous; immigrants from El Salvador may have different customs and traditions affecting life-style choices than, say, those from Guatemala or Mexico. Or members of certain ethnicities may not share identical views of health care in Los Angeles.

The focus groups will help determine how best to promote healthy life-styles to seniors in five distinct communities, which will be chosen based on concentration of seniors and participation of health-care providers and community-service groups.

Rodriguez, the son of Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants, credits WISE’s former executive director, Maria Arechaederra, with the concept for Healthy Abuelos as a tool to help bring together social-service and health-care providers to assist seniors.

“[Academicians] are good at pointing out what the problems are,” says Rodriguez, who chairs the Latino Coalition for Healthy California, a statewide advocacy group for both health-care providers and consumers. “What we need to do more of is identify solutions in the real world, solutions you can pick up and apply in ethnically diverse communities. That takes trust, and trust takes time.” — Phil Hampton

COMMUNITY REVITALIZATION

The Vernon-Central district in South Los Angeles has a vibrant history. Once peppered with such famed establishments as Club Alabam, the Memo Club and the Elks Lodge, the area pulsated with jazz in the 1920s and ’30s. Among the district’s habitués were jazz greats Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Count Basie, who performed in the area’s clubs and stayed in its Dunbar Hotel, a luxurious haven for black visitors in racially segregated Los Angeles. During this lively era, Vernon-Central’s economy was robust and its merchants thrived.

The years after World War II saw the downturn of the Vernon-Central district, as soldiers stationed in the area began to return to their homes and other residents moved to different parts of Los Angeles. The area’s decline was further accelerated by the end of mass transit into the district, rising unemployment, crime, violence and a growing drug trade. Over time, the neighborhood welcomed new residents, mostly immigrants from Latin America. Like the area’s residents and merchants before them, these new inhabitants saw hope for bright futures for themselves and their families in the once-thriving district.

Past revitalization efforts did little to improve the area. But now, a partnership between Community Development Technologies Center (CDTech), a nonprofit training, applied-research and technical-assistance organization, and the School of Public Policy and Social Research’s North American Integration & Development Center, under the direction of Associate Professor Leo Estrada — aided by a $23,000 community-partnership grant — aims to turn the long-held hopes of residents into reality.

The goals of the partnership are twofold: to strengthen and enhance the foundation of the district’s business owners by providing them with much-needed training, and to create two resource Web sites for manufacturers affiliated with the Toy Association of Southern California and the Food Industry Business Roundtable.

Linda Wong, CDTech’s business and workforce-development director, has already seen the results of CDTech’s computer courses. “Most of the merchants are first-generation immigrants to the United States who have little education beyond eighth grade,” Wong says. “For many of them, the training available through CDTech is their first experience of any kind with computers. It was an enormous achievement to do what one recent CDTech student did — to produce a marketing flyer to advertise her women’s clothing store.”

Erika Villablanca, a master’s candidate in urban planning in the policy school, spearheads the second component of the project, development of industry Web sites. In order to create the sites, Villablanca first had to learn about the users’ needs.

“I surveyed the users and then researched what other sites were available to them,” says Villablanca. “I wanted to determine what would give them the greatest benefits.” From her research, Villablanca produced a report that will serve as the basis for developing the new sites.

Between the two projects, the partners hope to make a significant difference in the economic future of the Vernon-Central district, an important locale in the history of Los Angeles and one that has great potential to figure prominently in the city’s future. — S.C.

CONCENTRATED J.U.I.C.E.

Three years ago, Marcus Napuri was lost in the rave scene. He pulled all-nighters spinning discs at dance parties, taking and selling ecstasy and other drugs, and break-dancing in his free time. Then friends told him about J.U.i.C.E. — Justice by Uniting in Creative Energy — a community center that provides facilities and training for people to develop and expand their skills in the four elements of hip-hop: dancing, rapping, deejaying and mural art.

So Napuri visited the Pico/Union-Koreatown church where the community center operates every Thursday evening. What he found was an open dance floor where he could practice his moves and upbeat people who helped to redirect his creative energy. Today, Napuri says, he is drug-free, working full-time as a painting contractor, and coming to the weekly community center to break-dance and introduce others to the positive side of hip-hop.

“J.U.i.C.E. is like my church; it makes me feel good,” says Napuri, a fit 27-year-old decked out in the hip-hop uniform of baggy jeans, white and gray mesh jersey, sneakers and a white bandana beneath a black baseball cap with “Los Angeles” emblazoned across the front. “I know it’s a cliché to say, but hip-hop saved my life.”

Community center staff aim to replicate that sense of belonging and personal betterment with other programs throughout Los Angeles County. J.U.i.C.E. plans to use its $18,700 grant to gather population, crime and other demographic data, as well as information on the musical, artistic and cultural history of various neighborhoods, to look at how these factors influence the success of the current program.

The ultimate goal of the project, called J.U.i.C.E. from Concentrate, is to develop a manual on how to duplicate the program in other neighborhoods, Executive Director Dawn Smith says. She says she has received letters and e-mails from people in Compton, Lincoln Heights and Hollywood — as well as from other parts of the country — asking for tips on how to start similar programs.

Smith founded J.U.i.C.E. in 2001 as an outgrowth of her work as a counselor to youths at juvenile halls. “I don’t want to imply that they all said, ‘Start a hip-hop community center.’ … [But] L.A. has tons of community centers that are run by adults but are not providing activities on the level that youth can identify with,” she says.

She says her program has served more than 3,000 people, with about 100 attending each Thursday-evening drop-in at the church. Facilitators, funded in part by an earlier grant from UCLA, informally instruct participants in the hip-hop arts.

Smith’s UCLA faculty partner for the project is Cheryl L. Keyes, an associate professor of ethnomusicology who specializes in hip-hop culture. “It’s going to be a more sociological study in order to assess which areas in greater Los Angeles could possibly benefit from something like J.U.i.C.E.,” says Keyes, author of the book Rap Music and Street Consciousness.

Smith and Keyes emphasize that there’s much more to hip-hop than the rap music that has been popularized in the mainstream media, which tends to be more profane and misogynistic than the variety preferred at J.U.i.C.E. “Rap is something you do and hip-hop is something you live,” says Keyes, paraphrasing hip-hopper KRS-One. “It’s a culture. It’s an attitude.” — P.H.