Jonathan Gutterman, GS, went home last week with a collection of drawings from the young children he works with in Artists Reaching Out, a Community Impact program that runs after-school arts classes for children in Harlem.
“It helps the volunteers as much as it helps the kids,” he said, adding that his work with ARO and Peace by P.E.A.C.E., a youth conflict resolution program, has been a huge part of his life.
On Wednesday, Gutterman and other CI volunteers gathered in University President Lee Bollinger’s garden party to recognize the organization’s 30-year anniversary.
“We don’t have this much joy in the president’s house very often,” Bollinger said in a short speech in which he emphasized CI’s role in the neighborhood. “It’s great for Columbia, but more importantly, great for the community.”
Community Impact was founded in 1981 by Joe DeGenova, CC ’82, who was concerned that members of the surrounding area lived under dramatically different circumstances from Columbia affiliates. What began as a community lunch program soon became the University’s largest student service organization.
As the organization continues to grow, volunteers and CI staffers say they face new challenges every year.
CI Executive Director Sonia Reese said that during the economic downturn, the organization had to let go of two of its 11 paid staff members. Of the organization’s $1.5 million budget, only a third comes from the University.
“With the economic downturn, that [funding] was a challenge. There’s a greater need for the services … but we’ve also had some of our major individual donors come forward and really become champions of our work,” CI Development Officer Audra Acey said. “For any nonprofit, funding is always a challenge.”
Despite requests from groups like the Grant Houses Community Garden Project and Jumpstart, Community Impact has not added another service group since 2005.
Chloe Oliver, CC ’12 and a student executive for CI, said the organization has wanted to add a group for a while, but sought to prevent overlap.
“Our biggest goal was we wanted to accept a group that was different than we already had,” Oliver said of the current student executive board.
This year roughly 950 students volunteered with one of CI’s 25 programs, which range from tutoring groups that meet on campus to teams that staff local homeless shelters.
CI received seven group applications this semester, of which the board hopes to approve at least one.
“The students have been very frustrated,” said Reese, who has been executive director for 22 years. “We felt it would be irresponsible to take more groups that we couldn’t provide support for.”
Another obstacle some students mentioned was the extensive bureaucracy involved in running the organization. Reese, however, said there aren’t really that many layers in CI’s structure.
“From a student’s perspective, it looks like a lot of layers,” Reese said, adding that a lot of programs are student-run anyway. “In order to run a nonprofit, you need some of those layers in terms of accountability.”
Sallie Wilson, CC ’11 and a program coordinator for the Advocacy Coalition, which works with homeless and low-income clients at kitchen pantries by giving them referrals to benefit systems, said the structure of CI helps keep her in check.
“It’s hard, because you have many visions of how to help people,” Wilson said. “It’d be wonderful if there were unlimited resources to help people. Community Impact is certainly a gift in providing some of those resources.”
For student volunteers, Community Impact is partly about surprises. Nicole Oparaeke, CC ’11 and a volunteer for the America Reads program, recalled that when she was grading papers for a second-grade class that was practicing conjunctions, one of her students’ sentences was, “I can’t believe Malcolm X doesn’t have a national holiday.”
“I thought, ‘What? You’re 7!’” Oparaeke said.
But CI has a wider repertoire than just its well known youth programs. Tamara Harris, SEAS ’13 and co-coordinator of the English as a Second Language program for local adults, said she works with people from every continent but Antarctica.
Robert Niewiadomski, GS and co-coordinator of the same program, said working with CI gets him thinking about his own experiences.
“I do have a special bond that I share with the ESL program. I can relate on a personal level as an immigrant from Holland.”
Student involvement has evolved over the last 30 years, according to Associate Director Sandy Helling, who has worked with Community Impact for over 20 years.
“Our student volunteers come in now more experienced than before,” Helling said. “Students have the opportunity to provide to neighbors, both the community getting good services as well as the volunteers getting meaningful experiences.”
According to George Van Amson, a member of the CI board of directors and a trustee emeritus, the most critical thing CI does is to develop connections between the University and the community.
“It’s important that the University not be an ivory tower in the community,” Van Amson said. “This reception is a manifestation of how important the organization is to the University.”
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