By Bonnie Culverhouse
Just what is the best-kept secret in the Minden community? Well, according to founder/director Ron Anderson, it could very well be Project Reclaim.
Periodically, Anderson gathers a group of local leaders and businesspersons to his Project Reclaim location to do something a lot of people may not … tell his story. It’s a way to let them know why he founded the project and how they can help get out the word.
Anderson grew up in an apartment in Shiny, he said.
“By the time I was 16, I was carrying a gun. I really believed that I would die on the streets by a gun,” he said. “That’s what people told me, and I believed it.”
But, thanks to a teacher, Anderson turned a corner before he graduated, and he does his best to give back to the community.
Project Reclaim is a highly constructed afterschool and summer academy that helps ensure today’s youth don’t go through the same challenges as Anderson. It offers youth leadership training, social skills development and academic and behavioral follow up and intervention/referral services for kids third grade through high school. Anderson hopes to add kindergarten and up.
“We provide service learning opportunities for our people because we want them to understand – living in this great country – you don’t just go around with your hand out.” Anderson said. “You have to learn that you have to give back. There’s a responsibility and obligation to help the community to be better.”
In addition, his program offers parental and guardian activities, workplace readiness training and a lifeskill class under Judge Sherb Sentell.
Statistics followed from 2008 until 2012, show 100 percent of those students who came through Project Reclaim avoided teen pregnancy, juvenile court and remained in school.
If you don’t have a child who falls into these demographics, why should you care? Well, if for no other reason, then your tax dollars.
If a young person ends up in a Louisiana Juvenile Secure Facility, it costs $424 per youth, per day to house and feed them. It adds up to more than $154,700 per year.
Project Reclaim, with 72 youth coming through the program over one year, the cost is $8.52 per day for one youth over that one year. With grant funds, that’s $4.28 per family per day.
Anderson’s operating budget is $225K per year. He has one paid assistant, Zaria Stephens. who tutors math, provides homework assistance and helps with administration.
“It’s a fiscally conservative program,” he said.
But like a lot of these programs, Project Reclaim depends on grants that aren’t always forthcoming, and the support of the community. So, if you don’t know about it, Anderson would like nothing better than to have any and everyone to visit Project Reclaim at 202 Miller Street (next to UCAP) in Minden. Learn about what they are doing there, the lives they are changing and what you can do to help, or visit prstars.org and donate.
