A mentoring and tutoring program initiated by the School of Education is boosting the self-esteem and academic skills of children from the West Grove community.

During a community event at Elizabeth Virrick Park, MarieGuerda Nicolas, left, associate professor and chair of educational and psychological studies in the School of Education, speaks with some of the UM student mentors and counselors involved in the Kulula Project.

The first time they met Daryl, the group of University of Miami students involved in an after-school initiative that serves at-risk children thought the 9-year-old boy was too angry to be helped. The youngster kept to himself, refusing to join the other kids in daily activities meant to build self-esteem.

“With a father incarcerated and a mother in and out of drug rehab, he had every reason to be angry,” says MarieGuerda Nicolas, associate professor and chair of the Department of Educational and Psychological Studies in UM’s School of Education who created the Kulula Project, the mentoring and tutoring program in which Daryl is enrolled.

By the project’s third session, however, Daryl began to open up. “He was more confident, more engaging,” Nicolas recalls. “We saw a very different kid, not the one who started in the program. He even came up with an amazing community project to address the poor street-lighting conditions in his neighborhood.”

Today, Daryl is one of the project’s stars, drawing praise from his elementary school teachers for his improved behavior.

Nicolas credits the Kulula Project for his transformation. “One of the reasons we started Kulula is that we realized some of the aggressive behavior we’re seeing in kids of different ethnicities is related to a lack of understanding and knowledge about who they are,” she explains. “There’s enough data to show that people, not just kids, who are grounded in terms of their cultural identity are able to do better in responding to racism discrimination.”

As part of the project, which began last January, UM undergraduate and graduate students mentor 6- to 14-year-old at-risk youngsters from Miami’s predominately Black West Coconut Grove neighborhood, increasing their awareness of African heritage and culture, boosting their self-esteem and leadership skills, and helping them develop relationships with peers in the community.

Children from the West Grove community perform at the Peace Around the World event, which included dances, poetry readings, and speeches on the way Christmas is celebrated around the globe.

Through after-school sessions held throughout the academic year, the curriculum covers areas such as African-American history and culture as well as hygiene and health, analyzes media messages about race and ethnicity, and teaches the children about influential Black leaders.

A concurrent tutoring program improves the children’s academic and study skills, preparing them for a college education, “a dream many of them never thought possible,” says Billie Schwartz, a first-year doctoral student in the School of Education’s Counseling Psychology Program and project coordinator for Kulula.

About 60 children are enrolled in the project, with youngsters from Coconut Grove, Frances S. Tucker, and George W. Carver elementary schools as well as Ponce de Leon Middle School receiving mentoring and tutoring at Elizabeth Virrick Park.

There, they often interact with dozens of other children who are enrolled in a youth intervention program run by the Thelma Gibson Health Initiative, which provides free HIV testing, substance abuse counseling, medical referrals, and social services to needy residents of the West Grove and South Miami.

Created by longtime UM trustee Thelma Gibson, the initiative partners with Nicolas and the School of Education on the Kulula Project, sharing space at Virrick Park and collaborating on community events.

While the Kulula program—which gets its name from a Swahili word that means succeed, achieve, and accomplish—is currently conducted only at Virrick, project coordinator Schwartz says the School of Education also hopes to implement it at the Barnyard Community Center, another aftercare center in the West Grove.

Shanel Hyler, right, a 14-year-old mentor who works with children in the Kulula Project, practices a dance routine with one of the youngsters enrolled in the program.

For now, though, the project faces the challenge of keeping its services at their current level. With Children’s Trust funding to the Gibson Health Initiative expected to decrease next year, the Kulula Project might see a decline in its mentoring and tutoring services to children. “Right now, we’re serving more than 50 kids,” says Nicolas. “Do the cuts mean we’ll serve only ten or 15? That’s something we’ll address in upcoming meetings with the Gibson Health Initiative.”

Despite the possibility of funding cuts, those concerns were put aside for three hours last Friday, as the UM student mentors and tutors joined the children they serve to celebrate “Peace Around the World.” Held inside the Virrick Park gymnasium, the community event featured speeches, music, dance, and poetry readings about the way Christmas is celebrated around the globe.

Abigail Francisque, a fourth-grader at Frances S. Tucker Elementary School, was among the Kulula Project students who performed a dance routine for an audience that included proud parents, UM students, community leaders, and workers from the Gibson Health Initiative. The 9-year-old says she enjoys being a part of Kulula “because it allows me to express my feelings.”

She enjoys the project’s Unity Circle, an activity held on Fridays in which the children form a circle, take turns pouring water onto a plant that sits in the center, and saying the name of and giving thanks to a family member who has supported their goals.

But it is the community project—a proposal to improve the infrastructure, social services, or appearance of the community—that Francisque feels is most important. Every child in the Kulula Project must submit one. Francisque wants to beautify Virrick Park, the place where she learned to tap dance, with trees and other flowering plants.

She and the other Kulula kids, some of whom have proposed community projects aimed at reducing prostitution and drug activity in their neighborhoods, will present their projects and discuss strategies to implement them when they meet with a group of UM professors on the Coral Gables campus next spring, according to Schwartz.

Jarren Gary, an 18-year-old UM student from Orlando who serves as a Kulula mentor, says watching the children participate in the project is like “seeing a younger brother or sister grow up and mature.” He signed up for the program because he wanted to “help the community” in which he attends school.

Nicolas says such projects work, citing favorable results from a similar mentoring program she started as a faculty member at Boston College. “These kids often live and go to school in an environment where people label them,” she says. “They just need a good sense of who they are.”