NORFOLK — City officials discussed the future plans for the Ready to Thrive outreach initiative this week, sparking an impassioned response from council member Tommy Smigiel and a call to spread the benefits to other communities throughout Norfolk.
“We keep on focusing on the same parts of the city, but we’re dealing with poverty all around the city,” Smigiel said following the proposed Ready to Thrive back-to-school programs for the coming school year.
“We’re ignoring populations in other parts of the city because it’s easier to just go ahead and target areas where we know it’s stronger, but we need to make sure that if this is going to be a city-wide thing that we are focusing on as many of the kids as we can,” Smigiel said.
The initiative, which launched in August in 2016, serves as a city-wide program that focuses on assisting children in need by removing barriers to learning, identifying the individual needs of students, and providing assistance based on those unique needs to meet.
One of Ready To Thrive’s biggest events, according to interim Deputy City Manager Stephen K. Hawks, was the Back-to-School Fest at the Norfolk Scope Arena in August which drew 1,343 people and provided almost 1,000 students with backpacks and supplies prior to the school year.
Along with the recreational activities, the event also provided families with access to community resources and health services present that provided immunizations to children.
While the event helped several children and families living in Section 8 and public housing who were invited, both Smigiel and council member Mamie Johnson raised concerns for children in need who are being passed over because they are Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority residents.
“Being in the schools,” Johnson said, “we see the children all the time and they live in everyday normal neighborhoods and they go to school, but for many of our children they don’t have the resources that are available them and they are also below the poverty line.”
The proposed plan for the 2017 Back-to-School Fest was to host the event at the Scope again on August 26.
According to Hawks, who presented the Ready to Thrive updates, the projected plan for next year’s event is to invite families within the community living in public housing, Section 8 housing, and “specialized populations,” which could include special needs children.
Hawks said that when Ready to Thrive began planning Back-to-School Fest 2016, it was approximately a month after the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority held a similarly styled event where they ended up canceling because of the crowd.
“We were very scared of that because this is not a city-funded event,” he said. “We had to obtain donations for many of the supplies like the school supplies and the bookbags. We were very worried, because we did not want to run out, and we did not want a volume (of people) that would overrun us.”
Both Johnson and Smigiel offered to provide guidance for the upcoming Back-to-School Fest for next school year to devise a plan that will remove disparities in who benefit from these resources and evenly extend Ready to Thrive programs and resources throughout the city.
“We want to make sure that we are hitting all kids,” Smigiel said. “I want to make sure that this is being spread out and we are having equal access for children in other parts of the city that are dealing with poverty. Black, white, I don’t care what color they are — it’s poverty. Poverty doesn’t look at color.”
