A Tree Growson Skid Row

The Central City East neighborhood of Downtown Los Angeles goes by another moniker – one familiar to the public and long considered synonymous with urban hopelessness: Skid Row. In 1979, a Los Angeles Times article exposed the difficult lives of children living in Skid Row, and the piece galvanized social worker Tanya Tull to secure a $5,000 grant and turn a Skid Row warehouse into a childcare facility. That is, she planted something. So began Para Los Niños (PLN). “For the Children.” 

Since 1980, Para Los Niños has been a grassroots powerhouse; innovating culturally responsive programs that deliver opportunity to some of Los Angeles’ most marginalized kids and their families through integrated education, wellness support, and advocacy. Poverty and inequity can seem cyclical, inevitable. They are not.  Give someone the space to breathe, to locate their own potential – and they will lift themselves like a rocket on a column of flame. It starts with the at-risk children.

“As we’re enrolling a child into one of our centers, schools, or other programs,” says Drew Furedi, PLN’s president and CEO, “we’re identifying how many family members they have, what additional resources they may need – particularly around food insecurity, housing insecurity, mental health referrals. It is the child, yes. But Para Los Niños really is wrapping around the entire family.” What has become clear in PLN’s decades of working with families is that it is difficult for anyone to succeed academically or economically when they are experiencing hunger, discrimination, and the long-term stress of living in under-resourced communities.

Para Los Niños’ beginnings 45 years ago were a kind of emergency triage. Today the nonprofit operates 16 locations across L.A. County, including seven early education centers, two charter schools, and two “Workforce Services” centers focused on high school drop-out prevention and recovery. PLN is also a children’s mental health provider – the only such provider on Skid Row – offering a host of evidence-based clinical mental health services. 

The ever-growing PLN family works with community-based organizations, city and county agencies, elected officials, and businesses to fuel the mission. PLN’s leadership program pairs community members’ lived experience with the skills to build collective power and work productively with these entities to make a positive impact in their neighborhoods.  

How to fight the illusion of inescapable poverty? You help grow a determined community and provide it the oxygen and sunlight to rise of its own accord. PLN serves 10,000 children, youth, and families annually. 

“There still is such a need for the nonprofit sector, public sector, and private donations, philanthropy and supporters,” says Furedi. “To not just stitch together a safety net, but to weave it together so that it’s something that can address all the needs that are out there for these kids.”