|
|
Former Actor Puts Talent to Work in After School Program
by Carol E. Barnwell
Willie Webb, 12, focuses the video camera with Lester Earls, 16, (in back) and Chester Payton, 13 (right) looking on.The boys are part of an after school program run by Matt Stanford at St. Vincent’s House in Galveston. |
Matt Stanford was born and raised in the same Galveston neighborhood where he started an anti-gang, after school, video arts program several years ago. With the help of Michael Jackson, executive director of St. Vincent’s House, Galveston, funds from the community block grant program helped Stanford’s program. “This was a group people thought could not do well. I knew the program had to be new. It had to fit each guy,” he said.
“I used to test boundaries,” Stanford said, somewhat reluctant to share the specifics of his own youth. The father of three admits to messing up on a number of occasions and it is that precisely that makes him the person to speak to the young, impoverished youth of Galveston.
His anti-gang group had a handful of core members and each brought a friend or two. Stanford did plays with the older guys, and only one member in two years left the group. He said the acting experience was powerful for the hardened youth. He now ‘shepherds’ a younger group after school while the anti gang group meets next door with another mentor.
Stanford is the education and outreach coordinator for the well care initiative at St. Vincent’s, a diocesan institution that provides day care and health care to Galveston’s underserved population.
Matt Stanford and some of the boys in his afternoon video class. |
He tries to educate people in the neighborhood to the benefits of being well, helps them navigate the health care system, learn to eat healthy and exercise. He has developed a series of videos using a character he created to teach about diabetes and other health problems that are abundant in this community.
His after school program is not funded and Stanford does it on his own time. An actor by avocation, he uses his talent to teach kids to write scripts, tape and edit brief documentaries and movies they have created.
“We try to ‘Hope’ people,” he said. “We fail a lot, but we win some too. Then it’s great.” Stanford nudges the older boys to finish school or get their GED. He encourages the younger ones to stay in school and makes an effort to know each one of them. While working for Communities in Schools, he got 47 boys in the job corps. He taught high school algebra at Ball High School, using theatre to teach the concepts of word problems. “They got better at reading and comprehension and ultimately got better at algebra,” he said.
With St. Vincent’s video equipment, the boys learn to cooperate, to be responsible for the lights, camera and computers, and to plan a production and operate the camera, he explains. “They gather the tools and equipment they need and I help them stay on it and find the resolution to finish,” Stanford said. The after school group, 11-16 years old, has written a script about a boy who finds a bag of money and decides to do good things with it. The boys even talked a local pilot into taxiing them down the runway for one of the shots in the video.
The young men are vulnerable Shepard said. “Their fathers are not present and the police treat them like they are bad already,” he said. The loss of the black longshoreman years ago undermined the black nuclear family in Galveston, Stanford explained. The island lost a layer of economic stability and pride that has never been replaced. “It’s like we’ve lost a generation of leadership and who better to fix that than us, the generation that got lost!” he said, alluding to the hours he gives back to the neighborhood.
Consistency is important for the five boys who spend time with him after school Stanford said. “They have to see you everyday. Three boys are working on the video project today. Willie Webb is 12. Lester Earls is 16 and Chester Payton is 13.
They claim the story ideas are half theirs, half Stanford’s. “Making [the movie] is the fun part,” Webb said. He sets up the lights. Everyone gets a turn at filming. A computer and video game enthusiast like any other fifth grader; Webb is also a basketball player. Payton is in middle school focusing on math and computers.
Earls is a sophomore at Ball High School. He works at a local water park and wants to be an industrial chemist or an archeologist, he said, but right now he plays baritone in the marching band. Does he know anyone in a gang?
“Yea, they’re alright, but you have to stay away from them when they’re fighting,” he said with a matter of fact wisdom. English is his favorite subject because, “Some people talk proper and I want to talk like that.”
Who knows, with Stanford’s help and the boys’ developing video skills, there just may be another George Lucas or Steven Spielberg blooming right now at St. Vincent’s in Galveston.
|
