09/27/09: HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH: Father Belle Community Center Offers Safe Space for Westside Youths

“My little brothers used to play outside, but you never know when they are going to shoot,” said Buffalo’s Marielys Conde.
The lower west side teenager says her neighborhood is fighting gang violence, drugs and poverty. Conde says she spends a lot of time at the Father Vincent Belle Community Center. She’s involved in the AmeriCorps and says the community center helped her put education first.
“Last year I wanted to quit school and everybody was like ‘don’t do it,’ keep going you don’t want to be out here like everyone else trying to have babies and drop out of school and live out of welfare. You want to be something better than that. And this community center helped me,” smiled Conde.
Three to five hundred people use the Belle Center at the heart of the Buffalo’s lower west side. The majority of city’s Latino population lives in the Ellicott and Niagara Districts where there’s a growing need for poverty and anti-crime programs. The U-S Department of Justice reports Hispanics 12 and older make up 14% of the victims of violent crime.
“A lot of stuff has been happening lately too. A lot of shootings and killings and young people getting killed,” said Catherine Rivera a youth employee at the Belle Community Center.
“It’s a tragedy to lose someone who has not even made it to adulthood let along through their teenage years,” added coworker Larusha Blakley.
Father Bell Center programs run the gamut from G.E.D., AmeriCorps, computer education and child care services. Center officials say these prevention programs help reduce the need for interventions later in life.
“Giving these kids an opportunity to learn these skills and get the knowledge that they need so that they won’t get involved in violent acts or dropping out of school or drugs,” said Stanley Fernandez a youth director at the center.
Fernandez lived on the Westside for 20 years and says the Belle Center has shaped hundreds of young lives like Conde’s who wants to become an X-Ray Technician.
“I would like to go to ECC and see where that takes me,” smiled Conde.