Executive Director
Vontrell Jimenez is the Executive Director of Heart-Hands, a not-for-profit organization based in Pleasantville which combines neighborhood restoration with teaching kids trade skills (construction and landscaping), teamwork, and work readiness. The program sends a team of high school age youth to fix up the public face of a house when the owner/tenant isn’t able to take on such a large maintenance task.
The program has been going well; seven teams completed improvement projects at a total of 12 houses in the neighborhoods south and east of Pleasantville High School last year. Mr. Jimenez would like to expand the program, but where? His supervisors can handle three more teams, at most.
An area bordering his current service area would be the easiest place to expand, given his current staff. Outreach into an under-served area would have the most impact. Mr. Jimenez logs in to the Youth Services Map to look for places which match both goals.
An overview graph of Pleasant County shows four zip codes which have far fewer kids participating than average. Three of them are on the other side of the town, so Mr. Jimenez clicks through the nearest one to find out more about what is being done in that area.
There are a handful of agencies operating there, each with about a dozen clients. This is an area where Heart-Hands could have an impact! Also, a few support organizations show some activity; Jimenez has been trying to connect with the Greaves Foundation for two years. Most of the agencies offer a very different set of services than Heart-Hands offers, but Ayudantes seems to have a similar mission. Click through their name to find out more about their programs.
Perfect! Ayudantes gets kids from Chesterfield Middle School to participate in neighborhood park projects. Those kids could graduate from Ayudantes into Heart-Hands when they graduate from Chesterfield to Pleasantville High. Armed with data from the Youth Services Map, Heart-Hands and Ayudantes approach the Greaves Foundation together, with a program for long-term engagement in a targeted area.
