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Students make wooden toys for holidays

By: JESSICA MUSICAR - For the North County Times

SAN MARCOS --November 20, 2004 -- Digital cameras aren't typically something one would find in a woodworking shop, but that didn't keep Bonnie Armstrong from her task. Leaning over a worn worktable, she painstakingly attached pieces to another wooden "digital" camera, some of which she had been working on since about 8 a.m. Saturday morning.

Palomar College students George Byrne, Valerie Markham, and Bernie Burke made old-fashioned wooden toys that will go to needy children who are in the care of various agencies throughout San Diego County.

Making a series of wooden playthings, from cameras to grasshopper pull-toys, Armstrong and about 40 fellow students gathered for the final session of a four-day toy workshop at Palomar College that produced toys for needy children in San Diego County.

Armstrong, who recently broke two wrist bones, said her injuries couldn't keep her from participating in this annual event. This was the second time she worked in the toy-making class.

It "won't keep me down," Armstrong said of her injuries. "I wouldn't miss this. Even though we don't see their faces, we know their eyes will light up and their hearts will be filled with Christmas spirit."

On the first Saturdays of the workshop, students made interchangeable parts so they could easily construct the toys in a small production line in the final leg of the class. Among the toys made in the class are small cars, wagons, baby doll beds, helicopters, trucks, pull-toy seals that spin a box on their noses, and bumblebees that flap their wings when tugged across the floor.

After the last class, students were allowed to each take home one toy.

Of the 40-plus organizations to receive the toys are Casa de Amparo, the San Diego Youth Community Center and the Health and Human Services Agency's North Central Region.

The workshop, which was developed through a partnership between the San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association and Palomar College's cabinetmaking and furniture technology program, started about six years ago. Since then, the class has created thousands of toys for needy children, said Chris Feddersohn, one of two instructors who lead the four-Saturday class. The association provided the wood, shellac and parts such as dowels and wheels for the class.

As the majority of the students worked on this year's projects, others made prototypes of a toy xylophone that will be constructed in future classes. Each year, the class tries to add a couple different toys to the mix, Feddersohn said. This year, the class added the digital camera and the wagons.

He said the gifts are special treats for children because wooden toys, aside from being well-built, often become a memorable part of a person's life.

"They have a long history of being something special to many people," Feddersohn said. "Many times people will hang onto them because they are almost indestructible."

Feddersohn said that while the students are making a selfless gesture by creating the toys for young children, they also benefit personally by learning skills they may be able to use in the "real world."

"Some of the knowledge (they obtain) can be transitioned into real-world production projects they may get into," Feddersohn said. "I like how the students get to interact with each other and get the chance to give back to the community."

6/2/2005 - The County of San Diego is involved in combating gang activity: the Sheriff’s Department catches gang members who commit crimes in the unincorporated areas, the District Attorney’s office prosecutes crimes committed by gang members and the Probation Department keeps an eye on gang members after their release. The County of San Diego is also working with private-sector nonprofit groups to help combat gang activity in North County and elsewhere.

“We have organized the churches to assist us in gang suppression,” said County Supervisor Bill Horn, whose district includes Fallbrook, Bonsall, Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos and Valley Center. The County of San Diego has identified at least 17 gangs in those communities, and it is believed that nearly 8,000 county residents are members of gangs. The Ten-Point Program helped to reduce gang violence in Bostonin the 1990s and is now being administered in Oceanside.

Pastor Gerald Johnson of the City of Refuge Church of God in Christ has been working closely with Supervisor Horn as Johnson heads Oceanside’s Ten-Point Program. “It is still moving forward,” Johnson said. The ten points of the Ten-Point Program are to establish church cluster collaborations which sponsor “Adopt-a-Gang” programs to organize and evangelize youth in gangs (community churches serve as drop-in centers providing sanctuary for troubled youth), to commission missionaries to serve as advocates and ombudsmen for high-risk juveniles in the courts (the missionaries work closely with probation officers, law enforcement officials and youth street workers to assist high-risk youth and their families and also convene summit meetings between school superintendents, principals of public middle and high schools and Black, Latino and Samoan pastors to develop partnerships which focus on the youth most at risk).

To commission youth evangelists for street-level one-on-one evangelism with youth involved in drug trafficking and other illegal activities (the evangelists also work to prepare these youth for participation in the economic life of the community including preparation for college, development of legal revenue-gathering enterprises and acquisition of trade skills and union membership), to establish accountable community-based economic development projects which go beyond “market and state” visions of revenue generation (these include community land trusts, micro-enterprise projects, worker cooperatives and democratically-run community development corporations as well as participation in community revitalization and affordable housing development activities), to establish links between low-income and mainstream churches and front-line ministries to provide spiritual and material support as well as the necessary personnel, to initiate and support neighborhood crime-watch programs within local church neighborhoods.

To establish working relationships between local churches and community-based health centers to provide pastoral counseling for families during times of crisis (this includes the initiation of drug abuse prevention programs and abstinence-oriented educational programs focusing on prevention of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases), to convene a working summit meeting for Christian Black, Latino, and Samoan men and women in order to discuss the development of Christian brotherhoods and sisterhoods which would provide rational alternatives to violent gang life (those groups would also be charged with fostering responsibility to family and community), to establish rape crisis drop-in centers and services for battered women in churches and establish counseling programs for abusive men (particularly teenagers and young adults) and to develop an aggressive high-risk youth curriculum with an additional focus on the struggles of women and poor people which could be taught in churches as a means of helping youth understand that the God of history has been and remains active in the lives of all people.

The Oceanside program has already trained more than a dozen mentors. “It’s going very well,” said Ron Mazone, the faith-based coordinator and a member of the Ten-Point Working Group. Horn isn’t leaving the problem to church groups alone. On February 24 he hosted a strategy session for North County law enforcement leaders involved in gang suppression in Oceanside which included Sheriff Bill Kolender, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and featured speaker Bob Vernon, who is a former assistant police chief for the Los Angeles Police Department and is currently the president of the Pointman Leadership Institute. Horn considers that February meeting to be the first in a series of strategy sessions. Future events will involve North County government and community leaders and the public, and Horn is tentatively looking at a September timeframe for that next meeting. The North County Regional Gang Task Force is another part of the gang suppression program.

Each county supervisor has a discretionary Community Projects budget, and on May 17 Horn’s colleagues approved the allocation of $100,000 of District Five Community Projects funding for the task force which will be used for training, supplies and resources. Money is a strong complement to volunteers. “We’re still working on our Federal grant,” Horn said. Horn can’t promise the Federal money, but he expects that a White House staff member will be visiting in July to contribute to the coordination. Expansion of the Ten-Point Program is also based on funding. “That’s based on income, because in order for it to expand we’re going to have to have the personnel in place to support services,” Johnson said. When the money is available, the Ten-Point Program will likely expand elsewhere in the county. “We’re looking at this as a regional program starting first with Oceanside as a pilot,” Mazone said. “The supervisors see it as a regional issue also.”

Youth Empowerment
Lorraine Bowman, President
4249 Manzanita Drive
San Diego, California 92105
info@empowering-youth.org