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'Part of the solution'
Corps helps young people change their lives
(Published March 22, 2004)

By MARK ROSE
Special to The Common Denominator

If not for the filthy Anacostia River flowing along the border of their Southeast neighborhood – one of the poorest in Washington – nearly 300 young people might never have had the opportunity to change the course of their lives.

Despite having graduated from Duke Ellington School of the Arts, located a few miles from the river, Twan Woods had few prospects for the future. Growing up in one of the city’s poorest, most dilapidated, crime-ridden public housing areas, he said his life was a "day to day thing."

"You worry about surviving to the next day; you don’t think about the future," he said.

His only outlet was playing the electric keyboard in a band with friend Anthony Satterthwaite at Satterthwaite’s apartment in the nearby, similarly run-down Valley Green Apartments.

Woods noticed after a while that Satterthwaite always seemed to have money in his pocket, although he came to practice after his job covered with mud and dirt. None of Woods’ other friends had money.

One day Satterthwaite took Woods to the one-room office of the Earth Conservation Corps (ECC), a new neighborhood environmental restoration program, where he worked every day cleaning up the long-neglected Anacostia River, chock full of trash, tires, industrial waste and worse.

What lured Woods and other young people to the program was the prospect of money in their pockets from a regular job and the promise of payment toward vocational or college training if they completed the rigorous 11-month commitment required by the ECC.

Until he joined the corps, Woods said, "I lived day to day like everyone else. I needed something to do and needed money; I didn't care what we were doing."

ECC President Bob Nixon put Woods to work as a member of the ECC’s first class that graduated in the spring of 1994. It would be his way out.

A program of the federally funded AmeriCorps, ECC recruits residents mostly from the six nearby public housing projects, ages 18-25, to work 20 at a time for 11 months on the Anacostia. Satterthwaite’s Valley Green Apartments, Nixon said, were the first projects he recruited from 10 years ago.

For 35 hours every week, the recruits clear tires and debris out of the Anacostia and its tributaries. ECC’s biggest undertaking is the Anacostia Riverwalk, which connects Southeast Washington with the Tidal Basin on the west and Benning Road and hiking and nature trails to Maryland suburbs in Prince George’s County on the east. Another project of theirs is introducing bald eagles for the first time to Washington. A Media Arts Program is producing video documentaries of their efforts for public education.

Program participants are also working to clean up and restore Kingman and Heritage islands, both on the Anacostia near Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. They have turned the site into an educational program called the Anacostia Explorers, run in collaboration with the National Geographic Society. To keep it going, they had to kill plans by a company to build an amusement park there.

Participants receive $9,600 while they are working, then $4,500 toward vocational or college training when they complete the program. They are selected for their commitment to the environment and willingness to complete the program. Ten to 15 participants usually finish the program each year, program Director James Willie said, although only nine finished last May. Graduates usually go on to state universities or certification programs.

Woods’ attitude toward the program changed dramatically from the first month he got involved.

"This was an open door for me and these people (program staff) were on my side; I was doing something good. They were concerned about making us better people," he said.

He realized that cleaning the river and building the nature trail "made a difference," he said – a big difference from dealing drugs on the street or stealing to survive. "It is bigger than just you," he added. "It will help future generations."

Woods did production on one of the corps’ proudest accomplishments, a 40-minute video documenting their introduction of bald eagles to the city. He also wrote and recorded background music for it.

Now 28, he runs his own music production business. Woods used his ECC scholarship money to finance a two-year certificate program he completed in recording arts at Full Sail University in Orlando, Fla. Among his current projects is producing a series for D.C.’s Public Access television.

The ECC’s Henson Center was named after the nation’s first African-American explorer, and the first also to visit the North Pole, Matthew Henson, who lived in the District. In 2001 ECC moved into this permanent headquarters, which had been a pump house on the Anacostia renovated with a $300,000 redevelopment grant from the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cleaned and decontaminated the abandoned building, then ECC participants and staff refurbished it into a nature museum and conservancy. The center also houses a native fish hatchery, which releases fish into river tributaries upstream.

LaShauntya Moore, 24, grew up in the Arthur Capper housing project four blocks from the old pump house. She got pregnant twice, then started the ECC program for the second time after her second pregnancy. She earned her high school equivalency diploma while a participant in the ECC program in 2000 and will begin studies at the University of the District of Columbia in September, ending a three-generation cycle of public welfare. Currently a squad leader for a team in the ECC’s Media Arts Program, she’s also learning television production and editing.

"I don’t know what I would’ve done (if she hadn’t come here)," Moore said. "It opened up my eyes to opportunities."

Moore credits the job skills and work ethic she learned from her involvement with ECC for the positive direction her life has taken.

"I thought I would have to depend on government to help me take care of my children because I didn't have any skills. Now I can make good money, take care of my own kids, and that makes me feel good about myself," she said.

Not all of the program’s participants have been able to use the program to better their lives. Nine ECC participants have been killed in the neighborhood since the program’s inception. The latest was Diamond Teague, 18, who graduated last May. He was shot on his front porch in October in a case of mistaken identity. Teague was set to begin studying at the University of the District of Columbia in the fall to become a minister. He had preached a couple of sermons in preparation at Second James Baptist Church early in 2003.

Woods, like most program participants, went from a life of boredom, poverty and hopelessness to one of productivity, regular income and hope, with a blossoming career doing the music he loves.

"I’m never bored now," he said. "Never enough hours in the day."

Program Director Willie put it in a nutshell. "These kids aren’t just problems; they’re part of the solution."