- A Mother's Friend
- Georgetown,
Delaware
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- When Gwen Bazemore-
Newton received "misunderstood signals" that
the Sussex center of the Delaware Adolescent Program Inc.
could have been closed last month, she went to bat for
its clients and her employees.
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- After making a few
key community people aware of the situation, she managed
to keep the center open with minmal cutbacks in staffing
or programs.
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- "I'm a single
person," she syas. "I'll go on a limb for my
staff or the girls here."
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- As the director of
the Sussex DAPI, Bazemore-Newton oversees the
alternative-schooling program that ensures pregnant
teen-age students are able to continue their education
and to obtain health, day care and counseling for
themselves and for family mebers. In her 18-plus years of
employment, with social services, the 42-year old ...
once a single mother herself .... sees against-the-odds
situations overcome daily.
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- When the state-funded
centerr opened in 1972, many thought DAPI was a home for
unwed black girls, Brazemore-Newton said. As of December
1991, the center's enrollment included 13 white and six
Hispanic or Asian grils. "This past semester, we
have 50 girls in the program. That's more than both
semesters of last school year combine,." she says.
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- Five percent of the
girls at the school have had more than one pregnancy.
Statistics like that can be discouraging,
Brazemore-Newton says. "You find yourself spending
all kinds of hours with the girls, talking to them,
driving them somewhere. We even hace a two-year follow-up
period after they leave DAPI to make sure they're OK.
Many times all they need is somebody to tell them they're
loved."
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- While 95 percent of
the 11th- and 12th-graders do graduate, the younger the
girrls get pregnant, the harder it is to get them to
continue with schooling. But DAPI triumphs include a
seventh-grader who, during prgnancy continued schooling
and went on to finish high school and a four-year
college, without having anymore children.
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- "I credit my
staff. They go above and beyond the call of dduty. That's
why I went to bat for them when rumorrs of the closing
came up .... if you don't steer the kids in the right
direction, the what kind of future do we 'old' people
have to look forward to ?"
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- Jeff Williams
- Copyright 1992 The
News Journal, Wilmington, DE
- Posted for Non-Profit
Educational use under the Fair Use Provisons of the
InterNational Copyright Laws.
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