Two volunteers at the Storyteller Children’s Center started an initiative to send each program graduate off to kindergarten with a backpack full of school supplies, including a lunchbox and shoes.
Isabel Bassi and Spencer Bassi started the effort this year with 26 kids, and said the backpack donations support students heading into elementary school.
“It can be a big transition for children coming from Storyteller to larger public elementary schools, and we want to make their transition as smooth as possible and make sure they have all the supplies any other student would have,” said Isabel Bassi, who has volunteered at the center for five years.
“It is a last little send-off from Storyteller, showing them we believe in and support them completely. We are reaching out to various businesses and individuals in the community for any amount of contributions and donations to our project!” she said.
The Storyteller Children’s Center, which was started almost 30 years ago, was founded by a group of citizens in Santa Barbara County who noticed young homeless families with children congregating in parking lots.
Temporary transitional housing was set up for those families, including the basement of the First Congregational Church. Years later, the church offered to rent the house next door, which was then renovated into a preschool with a playground, said Donna Barranco Fisher, executive director of the Storyteller Children’s Center.
“In 2007, we realized that we had a huge waiting list, that we needed to serve more families,” Fisher said.
The group started a capital campaign and was able to purchase a second site in 2014, she said.
“We serve Santa Barbara’s most vulnerable and at-risk children,” Fisher said. “About 99 percent of our children come to us through trauma besides the fact they’ve all been homeless at one point in time. A lot of our children don’t have parents involved in the picture.
“Because they’re incarcerated or they’ve just completely disappeared. A lot of our children, if they’re not raised by parents, are raised by grandparents, great-grandparents, and we provide everything for the children.”
Storyteller Children’s Center runs a toddler and preschool program that also provides free meals to students, clothing, dental and medical treatment. As a therapeutic preschool, the employees work with therapists who come into the classroom with teachers.
“When our children come to us, typically children develop what we called the developmental milestone, and our children are not developed typically,” Fisher said.
“They have severe lack of progress or development in their social and emotional skills. And they’ve also learned the behaviors that are not appropriate. Because of what they’ve witnessed and what they experienced. They’ve been beaten, abused, we’ve had children who’s hands have been set on fire, we’re talking severe trauma,” she said.
Storyteller works with CALM (Child Abuse Listening Mediation), a nonprofit whose mission is to prevent, assess and treat child abuse in Santa Barbara County. With this partnership, they are also able to provide parenting support classes. Storyteller has mental health therapists and mental health consultants at both of their sites.
“In order to qualify to come to Storyteller, you have to be homeless, you have to make under the federal poverty guideline, and you have to be willing to either get a full-time job or be in school full-time,” Fisher said. “We aren’t just a handout situation, we do require the guardians or the parents, to be working or in school full-time. Because they are the outside of the community working in, looking in, our job is to get these families being part of our community.
“So they need to go to school, they need to get a job, they need to be participating. Because the goal is to have children go to kindergarten, socially, emotionally, developmentally ready, as well as academically ready.
Storyteller supports the families helping them get involved in school and find jobs, serving as a resource and a referral system for more than 100 families annually.
They work closely with Transition House because of their infant program. When their infants are too old to be in that program, they move to a toddler program, so Storyteller takes children 18 months of age through 5 years of age.
“The research shows that if your children aren’t ready for school, they end up dropping out. We can tell by third grade whether a child is going to continue to go on to finish high school and go on to college. And so if our children didn’t come to us, they probably wouldn’t ever have the chance to continue and have some success,” Fisher said.
The Bassis wanted to support students after they left Storyteller Children’s Center, which is why they started the backpack program for kids heading to kindergarten.
“Spencer and I went into Storyteller, assuming we would be helping and caring for these children, bettering their lives (which we have), but I think the kids have made a more permanent impact on our lives,” Isabel Bassi said.
“They have changed the way we see the world, the true importance of not taking a thing for granted, and most importantly to always smile and make the most of any situation, no matter how difficult the times seem. I know wherever I go for the rest of my life, these children and Storyteller’s mentality, will stay with me. Storyteller has given so much to us as volunteers, we want to give something greater back,” she said.
Each backpack and supplies costs about $50, and the project also aims to promote the work the Storyteller Children’s Center does in the Santa Barbara Community.
Click here for more information about supporting the program and the Children’s Centers, which are located at 2115 State St. and 2121 De la Vina St. in Santa Barbara.
— Noozhawk intern Julia Lee can be reached at news@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.