Readers Care: New Futures helps build sense of community

EDITOR'S NOTE: For a quarter-century, Seattle Post-Intelligencer readers have donated generously to the newspaper's annual Readers Care Fund drive, generating more than $5 million for local charities. Today, we look at one of the charities benefiting this year: New Futures, a non-profit that offers after-school, literacy and other programs for children and their families at low-income apartment complexes in South King County.

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For volunteer Susan Hautala, success at the New Futures after-school program is measured in test scores and the kinds of statistical calculations that can give non-scientists a headache.

To tutor Sahar Hedayat, 16, the measurement is a lot simpler. "Last year, one of my students started on just picture books and ended the year on chapter books," Hedayat said. "I felt like I made a difference and I really helped."

Both methods of examining the program yield the same conclusion: New Futures works.

And it works because people from all backgrounds -- from high school students to university professors -- lend their time and expertise to help children succeed despite obstacles of race, language and poverty.

Burien-based New Futures offers a variety of programs supporting families in some of King County's largest low-income apartment complexes, with an emphasis on education and community building.

It's not the kind of charity you'd expect would have use for a physical oceanographer devoted to the study of the deepest parts of the ocean -- waters that haven't contacted air or light for 500 to 600 years.

But Hautala, an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Washington, is using her data analysis expertise to help the program quantify whether it meets its goals.

"It's very interesting and very rewarding to be able to use the skills I have," Hautala said. "I'm sort of the introverted scientist who likes to poke around the data."

As it turned out, New Futures needed someone who could pull some hard facts out of a tangle of anecdotes.

"You hear these really amazing stories of kids' progress," Hautala said. But stories, no matter how moving, don't really show if the program is working or how well.

Hautala's work, analyzing results of family surveys and reading tests and how those results change over time, gives a more quantifiable answer.

Reading scores rose by a grade and a half in just under a school year. And perhaps more important, the parents of kids in the program showed a similar rise in their confidence at meeting their children's needs.

That's just the kind of hard data that foundations and corporations want to see before they donate money, said Ken Mundt, development and communications director for New Futures.

It's also what people want to see before they start using New Futures strategies in other organizations. "To help replicate what we do in other parts of the country, we have to have rock-solid assessments," Mundt said.

Like working with deep-ocean currents, finding meaningful ways to measure New Futures' success is intellectually challenging, Hautala said.

"But mostly, I am rewarded by my work with New Futures in the heart, not the head," she said.

As a scientist, she is adding to a slowly evolving stream of knowledge -- making discoveries that may only add up to something meaningful generations from now.

"At New Futures, I am very proud to be a part of something that is really improving peoples' lives, right now, this year, this child," she said.

While Hautala was a little surprised to find a place for herself at New Futures, tutors Hedayat and Abdul Abate, 18, were literally right at home from the beginning.

Before they bought a home in August, Hedayat's family lived for nine years in the Windsor Heights apartment complex where New Futures operates a program.

Abate moved into the King County Housing Authority complex -- right across from the Sea-Tac Airport -- when his family moved from Ethiopia two years ago.

Abate speaks English so flawlessly it's hard to imagine it is not his first language. "People say that kind of thing to me a lot," he said, smiling shyly. In fact, although his family speaks Amharic at home, Abate's English was good enough to help him win a $1,000 essay contest earlier this year.

He credits New Futures with helping him to hone and improve his English skills.

Abate -- who said he has a 4.0 grade-point average at Tyee High School -- said he started volunteering for New Futures because he wanted to go to college and a friend told him he needed activities like that for his applications.

After a few months, New Futures was able to pay him to tutor four days a week. That freed enough time for him to start volunteering at Harborview Medical Center's orthopedic unit twice a week.

Abate wants to return to Ethiopia as a doctor someday, to help alleviate some of the pain and suffering he saw growing up.

In the meantime, he said he believes his job at New Futures goes beyond schoolwork. He takes his responsibility as a role model very seriously.

"You have to show them how to respect others and how to be with their friends," he said.

Like Abate, Hedayat started at New Futures as a volunteer and eventually became a paid tutor. But their career paths will go different ways, she said.

"I know for a fact I won't be doing anything in the medical or dental industry," she said, mentioning her strong dislike for the sight of blood.

Taking her cue from the beloved airport she used to see from her window at Windsor Heights, she hopes for a career in the travel industry.

Hedayat said New Futures helped build a sense of community and a sense of ownership at Windsor Heights, getting residents to help plant a garden and take care of some of the grounds.

"It shouldn't just be the maintenance people," she said.

Now, even though her family has bought a house, she finds she misses Windsor Heights.

And she hopes she's giving her students that sense of home and belonging that she got from New Futures.

"I want to help them see we're all a community here," she said. "It doesn't matter what your skin color is or where you came from."

Or whether you're a college professor or a high school student.

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