Nov 20, 2007 8:00 AM

UCLA to help transform an L.A. neighborhood

Consider five areas of your life: health, housing, employment, education and safety. Now take away one and ask yourself how the others hold up.

Chances are that disrupting any one area upsets all the others. This regularly happens to millions of Angelenos, particularly African Americans, and Anthony B. Maddox, interim chief neighborhood officer of the Los Angeles Urban League (LAUL), is determined to change their sad fate. To help people keep their lives intact, Maddox met Nov. 9 with UCLA faculty, scholars and professionals from disciplines as diverse as public health and ethnomusicology.

The meeting was organized by the UCLA Center for Community Partnerships at its new outreach office on Stocker Street, not far from downtown L.A.

Maddox is overseeing Neighborhoods@Work, a collaborative project to transform health, housing, employment, education and safety in underserved neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles.

Launched a little over six months ago, the project is aimed at revitalizing a 70-block area surrounding Crenshaw Senior High School, identified by the 2005 "State of Black Los Angeles" report as having large African-American populations with significant needs: the lowest median income, the highest rate of homelessness and the highest rate of premature death in Los Angeles County.

The plan is modeled on New York City's "Harlem Children's Zone," a project whose mission is to create a safe learning environment for youth in a 100-block area of central Harlem.

LAUL partners with nonprofit groups, state and local government organizations, philanthropic foundations and corporations. The league, said Maddox, now wants UCLA to be on its list of strategic partners.

Indeed, UCLA can help in many ways — and is already doing so. The School of Public Health, for example, offers nutritional information, including a cookbook, to community residents. And at least one UCLA student is working on a youth leadership project in a literacy and youth training center in the 70-block project area. The student, a math major, is taking a civic engagement minor at UCLA's Center for Community Learning, said the center's director, Kathy O'Byrne, who attended the discussion.

LAUL plans to work with students from pre-K through high school to foster their education as well as relationships with caring adults, Maddox said. The league will also work with police to engage the community in safety issues, including the gang problem and the reintegration of ex-offenders.

"No one institution of any type is sufficient to fix this problem," Maddox said, adding: "We have to re-engage people as learners by making sure that the best knowledge in the world is put before them."

Franklin D. Gilliam Jr., associate vice chancellor of for community partnerships, said that UCLA fully supports LAUL's mission, "and so my challenge to you (LAUL) is to propose to us projects" that require innovative, results-oriented, interdisciplinary work. "We have to rethink how our own scholarship and community service work can interact."

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