On a recent morning, about 30 homeless and under-housed children from all over north Aurora arrived to Colfax Community Network with some vegetables and herbs that they had just plucked from their community garden plots at North Middle School nearby. After their morning yoga lesson, they split into small groups and learn how to cook the produce into ratatouille — a dish none of the elementary-aged kids had ever heard of or tried.
“My job today was to put 1 teaspoon of basil and 1 teaspoon of oregano and a pinch of salt and pepper into the dry mixture.” said Kerra Milsapp, 10, who lives with her family at a homeless shelter just a few miles away. “It smells really good, I can’t wait to try it later and share it.”
Kerra is one of about 30 at-risk kids living in motels, shelters and the back seats of cars in north Aurora who go to the increasingly educational and active summer day camps and summer food program offered at Colfax Community Network.
“There have always been summer programs, but never as dynamic as the last year or two,” said Megan Vizina, executive director of Colfax Community Network. “The children’s programs have been the cornerstone of CCN. It was really how CCN got started, and it was really the central focus for a long time.”
The nonprofit tucked in the attic of the Aurora First Presbyterian Church at 1585 Kingston St. first started in the community 17 years ago chiefly as an .
But in the last two years, and especially since Vizina became the executive director a year ago, the ideological focus of the center is growing to include more members of the low-income and homeless community, as well as more targeted support and education for the kids that stem from stronger community partnerships.
The gardening and cooking component that was introduced this summer, for example, was designed by University of Colorado medical students specifically for the kids at Colfax Community Network.
FEED Aurora (an acronym for food, education and environmental development), a healthy food and nutrition education program sponsored through the Children’s Hospital Cooking Matters program, linked up with Colfax Community Network in March and signed on for a full summer of programming at the nonprofit once a week.
“We started as a community garden education program and that’s how we got involved with the summer programming here at CCN,” said Erin McGonagle, 26, a second-year medical student at CU. “We did two weeks of bringing the kids to the garden and getting them to help us plant everything there. Some of the broccoli, basil and zucchini that we harvested this morning is actually going to be used in the ratatouille recipe.”
For the 30 kids like Kerra who get to be part of those weekly lessons, the nutrition information — like how much sugar is in sodas — and added bonus of taking food they prepared home to their families is changing their lives.
“I love everything about coming here,” Milsapp said. “We get to learn and do so much cool stuff.”
But there are more than 200 north Aurora kids on Colfax Community Network’s waiting list who aren’t getting those experiences because of limitations with space and resources. The 30 kids who do get into the program are selected based on an immediate needs evaluation.
“We’re trying to focus on kids who are in really unstable housing situations, like living in their cars are tripled up beyond capacity,” Vizina said. “For those kids, circumstances are so dire that their only shower for the week could very well be in the locker rooms before we go to the pool (during a summer program day trip).”
The nonprofit recently partnered with Mile High Behavioral Health to bolster their fiscal sponsorship. Things like regular grant and fundraising are still heavily relied upon — last month CCN raised more than $100,000 for day to day provisions for the staff and clients — but Mile High Behavioral Health and its board of directors are integral in funding and helping to find a bigger location for its exponentially rising services.
Less than a year ago, Vizina expanded the network’s outreach to anyone who is homeless or hungry or who needs help in the community.
From Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., before the kids arrive, anyone can come to get food from the pantry or help with resources. Last year, Colfax Community Network logged more than 39,000 individual interactions with people in the north Aurora community through things like outreach, in-house support or even over the phone referrals.
While Vizina said the effort has made a positive effect on the community in terms of outreach and community connections, it has certainly added to the center’s already vital need to expand into a dedicated, larger space.
“We’re in active discussion on finding a larger space, my goal is to get to that point in the next few years,” Vizina said. Hopefully we’ll be able to move out of our cramped little church attic and share big space and do more meaningful work with those people.”