Give-ologist
In a few weeks, the Schooner Youth Center, a non-profit organization and community center in Monessen, PA, will lose its sole employee – Jennifer Melnick Carota. The secretary of the group’s board since its 2006 inception, Carota has held a part-time paid position as executive director in a one-year bid to organize the fledgling group and launch its signature programs, including the Monessen Pay It Forward Initiative, for which Schooner received a Westmoreland County Community Connections Grassroots grant, and the Black Pants Project, which donates business clothes to women entering or reentering the workforce. But neither the director nor the organization is worried about the impending change: The Schooner Youth Center operates on the same kind of quality-oriented thriftiness that Carota professes in her mantra “shop smart, give more.” Carota believes that’s the philosophy that will keep Schooner on track, providing much-needed services in the very underserved mid-Mon Valley region, with the tiniest of budgets – or no budget at all.
Tell me about the Schooner Youth Center. It is Non-Profit and Faith-Based, correct?
The Schooner Center is an old Catholic school that’s remained vacant for a while. In 2005, Orchard Christian Fellowship got a grant from a Minneapolis-based organization – YouthWorks Foundation – to purchase the building and to make it usable; to renovate it, and attract tenants. There’s still a long way to go, but we’ve been able to [ready the space for] two tenants – Westmoreland Community Action and Mon Valley Actors and Artists. What sets us apart is that we have faith-based programs and traditional non-profit’s working together in a collaborative effort to meet the needs of the community of Monessen and the region.
Your one-year appointment as Executive Director is nearly complete. What has it been like?
My job is part-time, funded through the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives – it’s a grant for a targeted capacity-building program, which I sure believe we’ve done! Monesson is a very challenged community – for example, the principal of the high school, who’s on our board, says that 80 percent of the children [here] qualify for free or reduced lunches. Our partnerships [between faith-based and] traditional non-profits have really helped us to help them, by giving them a place to operate from.
What is the goal of the Pay it Forward Initiative?
When we strategized last year, I was familiar with the Pay it Forward [concept], and it really planted the idea in our heads – here’s a program that we can do, to gather the community together a couple times a year, and empower those people to run the program, using kids and adults [together]. We gather them together to brainstorm – make sure it’s the kids’ ideas instead of adults’ ideas – give them a little seed money, and let them take [whatever initiatives they create] throughout the Mon Valley and make their communities better. And then, the idea is, whoever they help, ‘pays it forward’ by helping someone else. We’ve had six teams complete their projects, from riverfront cleanup to sending care packages to soldiers in Iraq.
Giving things away – that’s your other profession, right?
I teach people to shop smart, so they can do more for the people they love, and for their communities. I did a book last year: Shop Smart, Give More: Change Your Life, Change the World, One Shopping Spree at a Time. The whole last chapter is, how do you give more to your community – I shop smart so that I can do charity work. I couldn’t volunteer, if I didn’t shop smart. It’s about a philosophy of giving. When the grant [paying for the executive director’s position] ends, I’ll continue on a volunteer basis. We’re just going to keep on going [with Schooner] with the thought that we’ve got no budget at all!
The Schooner Youth Center, Inc.’s The Mid-Mon Valley Pay It Forward Initiative is a Westmoreland County Grassroots Project supported by a $5,000 grant from Pittsburgh 250 Community Connections and The Sprout Fund.
