Austin has the oldest housing project in the nation...yes the oldest. Single story apartments arranged neatly in rows of dull gray brick with sea-foam green trim. Each apartment had its own large antenna-like clothesline outside each front door... some things must be done the old fashioned way. Aside from an occasional drying towel, t-shirt or cheap-plastic chair nothing about the outside of the apartments distinguished one from the other. It was 3:15 in the afternoon and signs of life were minimal.
The children aged 6-12 years old were equal in numbers of boys and girls... all either African American or Hispanic (though I know that other races live in the complex). This is an after school program...similar to the kind that I went to in elementary school. Sometimes there are 5 kids and sometimes there are 30 kids... today we had about 8. The two teachers help the kids with their homework, they do crafts and eat dinner. My first assignment was to help an 11-year-old girl with her homework, looking up definitions to 15 words and writing them in a spiral notebook... F-U-N (insert sarcasm here). She couldn't have been less interested in the definition to "refill"or in this hipster white-girl trying to help make it seem like fun... it took some encouraging and some team work... but we managed to get some work done.
It was 45 mins of my day, a few party tricks and a sharing of the gift I have been given. These kids are worth this and so much more. Lets be honest... the odds and many other things are against them.
For more information about Music For The City and the "Art of Giving" program go to www.musicforthecity.org
