It Takes A Village
And Other Lessons Children Teach Us
Hillary Rodham Clinton

Page 254

Kent Salveson, an Orange County based developer in Southern California, has offered an innovative example of how businesses can help to promote an entire community's involvement. In conjunction with the University of Southern California, he created a low-income housing project called EEXCEL Apartments. (EEXCEL stands for Educational Excellence for Children with Environmental Limitations.) Salveson's idea was to strengthen the ties between home and school, and to make education, child and health care, and family counseling more accessible to the poor. Explaining the thinking behind his brainchild, Salveson said, "If 'we want to change a neighborhood, a community, our country, we have to change the home. I don't care if it's in Beverly Hills or in South-Central Los Angeles. Children are being neglected. A nation is the sum of all its homes."

The original forty-six-unit complex has spawned other EEXCEL buildings in California, and more are in the works in several other states. All of them are in low-income areas that don't generally have access to the family support services they need. Each has space set aside for classrooms, which are equipped with computers, books, and school supplies. In exchange for course credit, local university students are available four hours a day, four days a week, to provide one-on-one tutoring to children who live in the complex. At the end of each semester, EEXCEL holds a banquet for the parents, children, and tutors to celebrate the children's school achievements and awards gift certificates from local bookstores to children who get good grades. The complexes also sponsor other activities and services designed to bring neighbors together -resumes, and job training programs, Campfire Girls and Boys, bookmobile visits, a food share program, literacy and art classes, and community holiday parties. Salveson says that one of his goals is to "break down the massiveness of the city to a smaller community of people who live in the building."

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