Caregiver Volunteers of Central Jersey - A Faith In Action Program

February 04, 2008

Groups work to help seniors, engage youth

Groups work to help seniors, engage youth
Distrust can stand in way of getting minority young and old involved
By Zach Patberg • STAFF WRITER • February 3, 2008


Bev Jones' first time assisting Phyllis Riddick was to help her locate her car in a ShopRite parking lot. From there, it grew to Friday trips to her favorite diner for the potato soup special and on to holding her arm while she walked through the aisles of Wal-Mart and the dollar store, eyeing the earthy ingredients of Christmas wreaths and gift baskets that she used to buy for craft-making before losing the dexterity of her fingers to a stroke.

These days, with Riddick's four broken ribs and bout of pneumonia complicating her leukemia and a heart already beating at 30 percent capacity, Jones mostly sits. Sometimes until 1 a.m., the two will talk — fusing a companionship within Ocean Medical Center's strange shadowed walls at a time when being alone gets lonely.

By now Jones, 66, a volunteer for Caregivers of Central Jersey, has earned the 60-year-old's trust. It wasn't so easy. As Phyllis, a tiny-framed woman with a robust shock of gray hair and a knack for never mincing words, said of Jones' first visit: "I was very cold to her. I wondered why this person I didn't know was in my home."

Phyllis, who is black, is part of a demographic inherently wary of solicitation from strangers, even when the motive is to help, black leaders and those in the outreach field throughout Ocean and Monmouth counties say. This tendency toward isolationism among African-Americans old and young, especially with people of other races and dispositions, has put them at a disadvantage when it comes to getting involved and evoking change, whether it's in social circles, politics, education, health or even family.

"We've become isolationists," the Rev. Randy McNeil, pastor at Mount Zion Church in Red Bank, said. "We disengage when we should really get out there."

Such a dilemma has not gone unnoticed. Those ranging from charitable groups and police officers to barbers and college students are making ambitious attempts to bridge the racial divide. Two groups in particular — one in Monmouth geared toward youth, one in Ocean focusing on seniors — have made it their goal, with the end game being to open doors for those who may only see walls.

Research shows black youth becoming increasingly marginalized. They are more likely to end up unemployed or in prison, to have sex in high school and be uninterested in politics, according to a 2007 study, Black Youth Project, at the University of Chicago.

At a recent roundtable of primarily black leaders, Lynette Whiteman, director of Caregiver Volunteers and the sole white panelist, said her three sons had no African-American friends and asked Cherelle Hill, a black senior at Colts Neck High School, if this was something discussed in her classes.

"Only in sociology," Hill said, adding that it was only she and the other black student sharing opinions, many of which she felt her classmates thought were wrong.

So Cherelle and her father, Christopher Hill, a Howell police officer, are trying to fill that void. They hold monthly interracial discussion groups at the Howell police station that draw mostly high school students from black, Hispanic, white and Asian backgrounds. The purpose is to dissect the gamut of youth-related issues, from why there is the perception that only blacks like hip-hop to why it's a faux pas to confide in your parents to how a different pronunciation of the N-word can make it acceptable to say.

Thursday's topic is the presidential race and the significance of having the first viable black and female candidates.

"How we perceive each other, we challenge that head-on," Hill said.

The youth leadership group started four years ago with as many members. Through word of mouth, attendance has since swelled to 45 and now includes humanitarian trips to such embattled areas as Katrina-hit coastal Mississippi and New Orleans.

Its objective also spread. Jaime Szyarto, one of the original members, is now a freshman at Rider University who tutors inner-city children in Trenton.

"I grew up sheltered in Howell," she said in a telephone interview. "(The youth group) is what broadened my horizons of how other people live."

Less organized but equally effective has been the gruff paternal counsel Greg Hodges endows on the crowd of teenagers that regularly gather at his barbershop in Freehold after school.

"All I have is good words for the kids; I don't have a program or nothing," the 55-year-old said. "I just try to keep them thinking positive."

Suspicions toward the unfamiliar still exist, according to those who work with black seniors. Yet this time, the consequences align less with becoming aloof and at-risk and more with a failure to get much-needed basic living care.

In 2003, only 1.06 percent of the senior citizens reached by service providers in Ocean County were black, less than the demographic's population percentage, according to the county's office of senior services. The reason, outreach coordinators say, was partly that an ignorance of cultural etiquette existed, which put black seniors on their guard when a volunteer of a different race knocked on their door.

"When you ask about documents, that's a red flag for anyone in the minority community," Audrey Wise, a black volunteer for the Ocean County Board of Social Services. "They think, "Why do you want to know about my personal business?' There's a trust issue there."

In order to close the gaps, the county's Multicultural Senior Taskforce — a conglomeration of various outreach organizations such as Caregiver Volunteers, Meals-On-Wheels, and County Connection — was formed in 2004 to explore better approaches and conduct cultural sensitivity training.

"We teach how to get people to communicate in ways that break down barriers," Whiteman, who heads the task force, said. "We're at a point where everyone is learning about their similarities."

Since the task force's first meetings, the percentage of black seniors serviced in Ocean County went up half a percent while total minority coverage almost doubled.

Having trained all her project directors and nurses last year, Whiteman intends to do the same this year with those outreach workers at senior centers.

Yet, in the end, there is such a thing as too sensitive, according Bev Jones, who, in addition to Phyllis Riddick, has provided company for a number of hesitant ailing seniors in her three years as a Caregiver volunteer.

"Not taking no for an answer works," she said.