U.S. Congressman Visits City Year Young Heroes Program

Congressman Vic Snyder (D-Arkansas) and Kenderick Scorza met at the City Year Young Heroes Program at Rose City Middle School in North Little Rock on Saturday. Scorza was picked to be a Young Hero because of the answers he gave on a written and verbal interview. 11-year-0ld Kenderick came to North Little Rock after his home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Kenderick was excited by Young Heroes because he said it allows him to give back to the community that gave so much to his family when they were forced here by Mother Nature's fury six-months ago.

The Young Heroes program is a local project of City Year which operates every other Saturday at RCMS. During the mornings the young participants take part in learning activities which include hearing guest speakers, doing physcial-training and role-playing games. Then, for the remainder of the day they go into the community and do a community service project related to their morning lessons.

On this day, since the day's lessons were about gender assumptions, the boys were going to make a quilt and the girls hammered away to make birdhouses for a local shelter. Previous projects included working at Arkansas CARES, a residential drug treatment program for women and children run by the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences College Dept. of Psychiatry.

Congressman Snyder's wife, the Rev. Betsey Singleton, Senior Pastor at Quapaw United Methodist Church in Little Rock was a speaker on this particular day and Rep. Snyder accompanied her. He was impressed with what City Year is doing in our city. So are we.

There will be a more complete story posted soon at the North Little Rock Mayor's Office of Youth Services blog. Check in on it often for info about things happening in my city of North Little Rock.

Steve