CANOGA PARK : Grant Requested for KYDS Program

Help for a financially strapped West Valley gang-intervention program, Keep Youth Doing Something (KYDS), has come from Rep. Anthony Beilenson, (D-Woodland Hills). Beilenson has written a letter to Roger Kennedy, director of the National Park Service, asking for an emergency $10,000 grant to keep the program on its feet until new funding can be found.

“We are afraid the program would lose momentum if it didn’t have funds immediately,” said Beilenson field representative Susan Little, a KYDS board member. Little said she doesn’t expect an answer to the funding request for at least a week.

The KYDS program started last year with a $40,000 federal Urban Parks and Recreation Recovery grant from the National Park Service, an agency within the U.S. Department of Interior. The federal grant to the city Recreation and Parks Department was to help avert crime and drug dealing in Lanark and Reseda parks.

The program sponsors Friday night softball and volleyball games in the parks, as well as field trips, dinners and dances for about 200 teen-agers from neighborhoods where gangs are prevalent.

KYDS Director Sandy Kievman said the program has run out of the grant money awarded in June, 1992. Although KYDS has some resources available from private donations and sponsorships, Kievman said another grant is needed to keep it going over the long term. The money is used for food, sports equipment, uniforms and trophies for the teen-agers, she said.

The future of the program has been in question since City Councilwoman Joy Picus, who started it, left office in July. Her successor, Laura Chick, has assigned a staff member to help organize softball and volleyball teams in Reseda Park.

But Kievman, a former Picus staffer who now heads the program as a volunteer, maintains KYDS needs a paid executive director. Lack of a permanent professional directorship is one reason why the program has run short of funds, said Little.

“What happens sometimes with a nonprofit group is the expertise needed to apply for grants isn’t there,” she said. KYDS board members had applied for private grant money but failed to get the funds, she said.

She said Beilenson wanted to preserve the program because of public concern at its demise and the improvements it has brought to the parks. “People now are comfortable using the parks,” she said.