By Hector Flores
Jose Saavedra, coordinator of the outreach program, recently announced the group has acquired a van for the project and is conducting interviews for a part-time assistant position to drive the van and offer counseling services to runaway teens and homeless adults living on the streets.
This is good news for the center and even better news for homeless in desperate need of help.
The Long Island Crisis Center had run the outreach program from 1997 to 2000, when funding shortages precipitated its canceling.
Now thanks to a three-year grant of $325,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the center has been able to bring the program back to Long Island.
According to Saavedra, the outreach program offers survival aid, one-on-one counseling, case management and shelter referrals to runaway teens and homeless adults.
"There is an estimated 35,000 runaway kids and homeless adults in Nassau County," he said. "These street kids are provided with condoms, referrals for HIV testing and housing (through Nassau's Home and Walk About Programs)."
The outreach program also endeavors to provide support to kids in gangs who would not otherwise go to the center for help.
"We try to find the hot spots and give the kids the service that they need," Saavedra said. "These kids join gangs out of fear and protection, and some of them have family members already in the gangs. What we are trying to do is provide alternatives to this kind of lifestyle, which generally involves: drugs, hustling, stealing, raping, jumping and murder."
The Long Island Crisis Center has identified five high-risk neighborhoods in Nassau County and Saavedra wants to serve them all: Hempstead, Freeport, Roosevelt, Westbury/New Castle and Uniondale. The people usually at risk are Latino, African American and Haitian, Saavedra said.
The outreach program is one of 10 programs provided by LICC, whose ultimate goal is to provide counseling and much needed service to people in need.
According to Executive Director Linda Leonard, the non-for profit group was started in 1971 and was at first organized by students at Adelphi University, who wanted a center that dealt with drug addiction. They called the group Middle Earth, a term taken from J.R.R Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
This student-run program has now evolved to become Long Island's oldest 24 hour-seven day a week hotline service, providing assistance in: teen suicide, depression, substance abuse, pregnancy, rape, sexual assault, child abuse, runaway and homelessness, eating disorders, domestic violence, sexual identity and AIDS/HIV prevention.
"The core of the program is to be available for the disenfranchised," Leonard said.
The center boasts a staff of 16, full and part-time workers, and has 150 volunteers, who serve as crisis intervention counselors, counselor assistants and community educators.
For more information on the counseling programs that are available or to become a volunteer, call the LICC (516) 826-0244.
