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Agricultural Experiment Station expands its mission to help at-risk kids achieve success
By the end of this year, 500 youthful offenders will be released from juvenile detention and sent home to Newark, where schools and social agencies have historically had a poor record of helping them turn their lives around. Last year 14 of them ended up on the city’s homicide list, grim reminders of the streets’ powerful pull.
But a new and unique collaboration of players, coordinated by Rutgers, has opened up shop downtown, providing instant triage and one-stop help for young adults ages 16 to 21 who are out of school, out of work, and possibly out of hope. It brings under one roof, in a comfortable and bright setting, a host of organizations providing counseling, education, and job training for kids who have criminal records or have just dropped out.
The Youth Education and Employment Success Center (YE2S Center), which opened January 30 with a press conference featuring Newark Mayor Cory Booker and county and state officials, is being run under the direction of Rutgers’ New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES). An outgrowth of a small agricultural program developed for youthful offenders in the 1990s, it is being managed by Kenneth M. Karamichael, senior program coordinator with Rutgers NJAES Office of Contining Education and a Rutgers alumnus whose work exemplifies the increasingly urban focus of the youth development mission of NJAES.
At the YE2S Center, Rutgers students studying criminal justice, social work, and education will have the opportunity to mentor young clients, Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick said at the opening ceremony.
“Our Rutgers students will help boys and girls in the community as they also prepare for a life of service,” he said. “I am proud to participate on behalf of Rutgers.”
McCormick called the project “a natural” for NJAES, whose role with youth has evolved from engaging only rural and suburban kids to activities with youth in New Jersey’s cities.
Karamichael, a computer science major who graduated in 1995 and is working toward a master’s degree at the Graduate School of Education, has been a fixture in Newark as director of Rutgers’ Transitional Education and Employment Management (T.E.E.M.) Gateway. T.E.E.M. Gateway has served Essex County youth by partnering with the New Jersey State Juvenile Justice Commission and the local parole office. The YE2S Center expands both T.E.E.M Gateway’s mission and the number of cooperative partners to include Newark public schools, Communities in Schools of New Jersey, community groups, and The Nicholson Foundation, which funds many child welfare programs in Essex County.
Karamichael, a Jackson Heights, Queens, native and lifelong Eagle Scout who was Rutgers’ mascot during his undergraduate years, began working with youth through Cook College’s Office of Continuing Professional Education in the mid-1990s. During his early years there he taught and coordinated programs for juvenile inmates in everything from beekeeping and egg production, to landscaping and other “green” skills.
“Then the juvenile authorities began focusing on after-care,” he said. “They asked us if we could continue to help after kids left custody, and wondered what other services Rutgers could provide.”
In the program’s new location at 200 Washington Street, near Rutgers’ Newark Campus, kids will be able to drop in any time between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. weekdays. Easy access to the multiple agencies housed there is considered key; in the past, young offenders had to take a combination of buses out of town to reach parole officers in East Orange – and sometimes cross into hostile, gang-controlled territory.
And there is nothing institutional about the look of the place.
“The goal was to put a family feel into the center, which has big, soft, paprika-colored couches in the welcome area,” Karamichael said. Rutgers banners and slogans on the wall also telegraph the notion that the university is an accessible goal.
“These kids have been disconnected for years,” he said. “We want to inspire and motivate them, let them know this is something they can attain.”
Visitors anywhere inside the three-story building also hear the peaceful sound of water, which gurgles up through an atrium from a pond and garden installed on the ground floor. It was designed by Karamichael’s fiancée, Monica McLaughlin, who is the staff horticulturist at Rutgers Gardens in New Brunswick. The pond was created by Rutgers’ continuing professional education instructor, Robert Belleck, owner of Lily Pad Ponds.
Within a day of the YE2S Center’s launch, Karamichael heard from new people and agencies, asking to join his roster of cooperating partners. Someone also donated additional computers.
“I’m excited. This is great,” he said. “Essex County College wants to get involved. Someone from the city just called and asked, ‘Is there anything you need? Do you need cabinets? Bookshelves?’”