DATE: August 21, 2024
TO: Honorable Mayor and City Councilmembers
FROM: Housing and Neighborhood Services Department
TITLE: PROFESSIONAL SERVICES AGREEMENT WITH VISTA COMMUNITY CLINIC FOR PROJECT REACH PROGRAM AT LIBBY LAKE COMMUNITY CENTER
RECOMMENDATION
title
Staff recommends that the City Council approve a Professional Services Agreement (PSA) with Vista Community Clinic (VCC), in the amount of $83,136, for the Project REACH Program at the Libby Lake Community Center, effective July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025; and authorize the City Manager to execute the agreement upon receipt of all supporting documents.
body
BACKGROUND AND ANALYSIS
Established in 1995, Project REACH is one of the longest-running programs at VCC. Reaching adolescents through afterschool programs located in neighborhoods with a history of gang violence, Project REACH has served thousands of low-income middle- and high-school students, providing daily academic, social and emotional support. Project REACH has helped to create a sense of community in the Libby Lake neighborhood.
Over the past year, nearly 70 percent of REACH youth at Libby Lake have completed at least one life skills curriculum, including: Baby Real Deal (childcare simulation activity; Expanded Learning (business entrepreneurship instruction); Safe Dates (healthy relationships); HOPE (mental health coping skills); and Education and Career Success (employment workshop). Youth also participated in 12 field trips that served to broaden the perspectives of young people who rarely leave their own neighborhood. Destinations included a visit to the Museum of Tolerance, a California mission, and the Tijuana Estuary Refuge. In a time when youth crime rates are climbing and young people report feeling disconnected from the larger community, REACH youth participated in over a dozen community-service learning projects, making and donating blankets to the homeless, distributing food to the needy, and cleaning up local parks...
Click here for full text