“I don’t think this is rocket science. When Danny (Rifkin) and friends created Avary, they did so out of love for children. And if kids know that someone cares for them, they will usually turn out OK.”
– Herb Castillo
By Mary Eisenhart
When a parent goes to prison, statistics show their kids have drastically increased odds of heading down the same path. Project Avary takes an intensive approach to breaking that cycle.
Back in the mid-’90s, Danny Rifkin, a longtime Grateful Dead family member and then the Rex Foundation’s executive director, was looking for a new challenge. “It was about a year after Jerry died,” he recalls, “and I was asking friends of mine whom I held in high regard for ideas for what I might next do in life.”
One of the friends he talked with was Earl Smith, who served as a chaplain at San Quentin prison. Smith told him that while there were some community-based organizations that helped former prisoners re-enter the community, and a few agencies to help families while loved ones were incarcerated, there were next to no resources specifically devoted to helping the children of incarcerated parents cope with the myriad issues that come with having a parent in prison.
The results, Smith said, were there for all to see, with sons following fathers following grandfathers into the prison system. But he had an idea of what might break the cycle — and who might want to do it.
Rifkin recalls, “When Earl brought up the fact that there were no programs for children with incarcerated parents, and that what would be good would be a summer camp and follow-up program, a light bulb went off in my mind. I knew that this was what I wanted to do. And with my previous experiences at Slide Ranch and Camp Winnarainbow, I had the experience and potential staff resources necessary to get the project going.
“I was, at the time, the administrator of the Rex Foundation, so I wrote a letter to the board asking them if I could use Rex as an umbrella organization until we could establish our own nonprofit status and whether Rex would supply a $10,000 start-up grant. The response to both requests was positive. In addition, Caryl, Mickey Hart’s wife, happened to see my letter and offered an additional grant of $10,000 from her family’s foundation, the Ohrbach Foundation. This was very validating for me, and I knew I was onto the next right thing.”
Launched in 1999, Project Avary (Alternative Ventures for At Risk Youth) began with Rifkin and a group of friends taking 32 kids to a week of camp in the Sierras. By the next year it had grown to three weeks, with a fourth added in 2004.
But Avary’s work extended beyond just taking at-risk kids to camp. Monthly Avary Adventure Days take kids on field trips throughout the Bay Area. There’s a Family Camp once a year, and twice-yearly celebrations gather the whole Avary community. There are leadership retreats and a mentor program to help older youth in the program work with the younger kids.
Underlying all of Avary’s work is offering “The Avary Way” (see below) as an alternative family structure and way of life to kids whose regular lives often lack both stability and positive influence. “The Avary Way” emphasizes five areas: social skills in daily life, creative arts, environmental education, physical activity and nutrition, and life skills. Along the way there are rituals, gatherings, and celebrations to honor the kids and their progress.
Avary is a small, resource-intensive effort (for example, at camp there’s one counselor for every two kids) serving the San Francisco Bay Area. But it offers a clear demonstration that what it’s doing works. Remarkably, of approximately 300 kids who have attended Avary camp since 1999, 159 remain involved today.
Since that first start-up grant in 1999, Rex has continued to support Avary with subsequent grants in 2002, 2004, and 2006, as Avary itself has continued to evolve.
Says Herb Castillo, who became Avary’s executive director last year when Rifkin retired, “In 2004 there was a surge in teen involvement. Rex funding over the following two years was instrumental in helping Avary expand the Teen Leadership program’s capacity to accommodate the large number of children choosing to commit their teen years to Avary. Today, nearly 60 of the over 150 children and youth participating in Avary are teenagers.”
We recently had a chance to speak with Castillo about Avary’s work, the difficulties, and the rewards.
Rex Foundation: What are the particular challenges kids with incarcerated parents face? Who are these kids — where do they live, and what are their families like?
Herb Castillo, Project Avary: The families we serve are typically “multi-problem families” who face a range of interrelated challenges, including poverty, lack of a stable home environment, lack of educational resources, and physical and mental health issues.
Research tells us that children of incarcerated parents experience trauma affecting their emotional and even physical development. Their ability to trust is undermined. Other problems include anxiety, asocial behavior, and inability to focus or concentrate.
Also, the constant contact children have — through their parent or parents — with the criminal justice system can socialize a child such that their life chances of incarceration can be as much as five times greater than other children’s.
There are an estimated 170,000 to 200,000 children of incarcerated parents living in the Bay Area. Obviously, we are only serving a fraction, but across a wide geographic area. The kids Avary serves live in eight Bay Area counties and in 39 cities.
Nearly 60% of Avary kids live with the remaining parent and another 20% with a relative, usually a grandmother. Most of our kids are low-income, live in tough neighborhoods where even a walk to school is filled with risk, and usually suffer from inadequate health care and under-resourced schools.
Rex: What’s the process for deciding which kids get to enter the program?
Project Avary: Summer camp is the primary entry point for a new child to join Avary. The child must be between 8½ and 11 and usually comes to our attention through a teacher or social worker. Thereafter, we strive to work with a child into young adulthood and base decisions around advancing into the Teen program on a child’s ability to thrive in our program.
We interview the parents and the referring party to determine a child’s maturity and readiness to attend camp, as well as fit into a community. Many of our kids have suffered emotional and physical abuse — in some instances even sexual abuse — and neglect. We want to be aware of potential problems, but do not screen out kids because they have problems.
We see with our teens — many of whom have been with Avary for five, six, or seven years — that with the right support and the right set of expectations, kids can prosper and dream, and act on those dreams, in spite of the hurdles placed before them in the early years.
Rex: You’ve mentioned that teens are your fastest-growing constituency. To what extent is this the result of kids starting the program at an earlier age and sticking around? And was this part of the plan from the beginning, or an unexpected evolution?
Project Avary: Avary accepts only children between ages 8½ and 11. Their commitment to remain involved in our program begins to form with their first summer camp, when they are introduced to our values and practices.
They are told that during the first two years of their involvement with Avary, they will attend one-week sessions at summer camp; that if they wish to graduate to two-week status and ultimately enter the Teen Leadership program, they must show that they are meeting the objectives under our Personal Responsibility goal. When they reach 13 and 14, they are considered for entry to the Teen program.
While in the program, they must demonstrate progress in achieving Community Responsibility objectives. In short, we present our kids with values and goals; we support them in achieving those goals; and, as you can see, many strive to meet these expectations.
Was this part of the plan? Yes and no. Yes, because we saw early on that a number of the older kids stayed with the program. No, because I don’t think Danny or anyone else was prepared for the number of kids who would ultimately stay with Avary into their teens.
Rex: Avary’s long-term, family-like commitment to the kids who enter the program is very striking. Could you elaborate on how that works, and why it’s important?
Project Avary: What impressed me most when I joined Avary was the constant reference to “The Avary Way.” The Avary Way is based on values and practices that promote healthy lifestyles and appropriate youth development.
When children attend their first summer camp, they learn that Avary focuses on five areas of development: social skills for daily life; creative arts; environmental education; nutrition and physical fitness; and life skills training.
For children to advance through our program — which means graduation from one week to two weeks, entry to the Teen Leadership Program, and graduation to senior staff — they must demonstrate progress in each of these areas.
