Meeting the Challenge

Campus-wide outreach lends a hand

to Fresno's impoverished

By Elizabeth Leffall
The Collegian

Just like the tattered and rundown housing they live in, 35 children in southwest Fresno are in need of a transformation from the inside out and Fresno State has stepped up to the plate.

“It all started about five weeks ago,” said Amy Chubb, director of the University Business Center. “After reading the statistics of how Fresno has the highest percentage of concentrated poor, we knew we had to do something to get involved.”

Spearheaded by Chubb and Chris Fiorentino, director of Civil Engagement and Students for Community Service, the Civil Engagement Task Force started a coat drive to help the small, impoverished community living on Motel Drive.

That coat drive, originally geared to help 17 teenagers realize their dreams of going to a Fresno State football game, has turned into a campus-wide outreach.

Through the collective efforts of the task force and the Fresno County Economic Opportunity Commission, the group successfully collected coats, gloves and hats for the youth before treating them to the Nov. 12 game against Boise State.

“The heart of this campus is so large that the response was overwhelming. Three boxes full,” Chubb said.

“We had so much that we took the extra winter clothing and passed it out to the neighborhood families. ”

Chubb smiled and nodded towards a white poster on her office wall. “These kids were so grateful for what we did,” she said pointing to various names scrawled in colored marker around a message reading “Thank You Amy.”

But there is still so much to do, she said. “The 30 percent poverty rate really translates when you look at the faces of those kids.”

Since the clothing drive, Associated Students has picked up the cause and is holding a toy drive for the same area.

Chubb said the group worries about passing out toys and clothes to children only to have their parents sell the items later on because some of the parents have troubled pasts.

“The parents living here love their children, but they have no coping skills,” Chubb said. “We’ve got to try. We’ve got to do something.

“The stories I’ve heard have curled my hair,” Chubb said closing her eyes and biting her nails as she recounted the story of a 9-year-old prostitute and a 5-year-old rape victim.

“I would expect this in a Third World country, not here.”

Although Motel Drive is a “pretty graphic example of poverty in Fresno,” Chubb said this poor community is not unusual.

“We have areas all over Fresno in need of care, like West Fresno, some of the Hmong refugee communities around the city and the downtown area,” she said. “There’s plenty of work to be done.”

Juan Pablo Moncayo, AS Executive Vice President said more than 50 students have donated so far.  AS will continue accepting toy and clothing donations until finals week.

The task force, along with EOC is looking into long term methods to “change the face of Fresno poverty.”

“These areas need mental health therapy and access to physicians. The list goes on,” she said.

Although Chubb will not be able to work with the task force directly next semester, she said her life has been changed by the experience.

“You don’t know how this has affected me and the young people we’re working with,” she said.

We may not know but the names of the youth on that thank-you poster do.

Michael, Russell, Johnathan, Melissa, Jarred, David, Eric and Felix as well as the others living on Motel Drive won’t forget that outstretched Bulldog hand.

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