10/22/04

LC041022

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

One woman's fight to make kids literate one book at a time.

Rebecca Constantino>> The print-rich are getting richer and
richer and the people who are poor are getting poorer and poorer
and then we're saying to them, why aren't you reading? Why
don't you know how to read?

Val>> And then, is it embarrassing, degrading or just plain
funny? A controversial TV show where contestants are going for
the green.

It's all next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> One of the best predictors of how well a child learns to
read is how many books they have access to and yet the state of
California is dead last nationwide when it comes to spending on
school libraries. So when one woman saw how some of Los
Angeles's poorest schools have only one book per child, she went
to work. Rebecca Constantino started a program called "Project
Access Books". Toni Guinyard caught up with her at her South
Los Angeles warehouse.

Rebecca Constantino>> "We have cases of these that someone
donated that you can read in the class."

Toni Guinyard>> On any given day, this nondescript warehouse in
South Los Angeles becomes a literary command center of sorts.
It is ground zero in a battle to get books for leisure reading
into the hands of inner city children, many of whom have never
had a book of their own.

Rebecca Constantino>> We have instilled in these kids from a
very early age that reading is something you do for the teacher,
reading is something you do and get evaluated on, and reading is
something that is painful instead of reading is a joy, reading
is an escape, reading is going to do so many things for you.

Rebecca Constantino>> "Have you girls found things that you
want, that you like? Any books?"

>> "I found one."

Rebecca Constantino>> "Only one? Oh, come on, you've got to go
home with more than one. That's unacceptable, one."

Toni Guinyard>> This warehouse is the home of Access Books, an
organization that collects donated books from affluent schools
and purchases new books from publishers to stock libraries in
inner city schools. It's an all-volunteer effort. The
collecting, sorting and cataloging of books is led by Rebecca
Constantino.

Rebecca Constantino>> "How many students in your class?"

>> "Well, there's one group of about between eight and ten
students."

Rebecca Constantino>> "Oh, that's all?"

>> "They exhausted the library selection."

Rebecca Constantino>> "So you should take at least three cases,
three boxes of books."

>> "All right."

Rebecca Constantino>> Injustice drives me.

Toni Guinyard>> In Constantino's eyes, injustice is defined in
part as the limited access to books given children in low-income
neighborhoods.

Rebecca Constantino>> I did a study where I went into forty
homes in Watts, forty homes in Compton and forty homes in
Beverly Hills and I just counted the number of books to which
they had access. The children in Beverly Hills had four hundred
times more books and that enraged me because not only did they
have great books at home, they had a fabulous public library and
they had a fabulous school library.

Toni Guinyard>> Rather than just complain about the problem,
she founded the organization "Access Books" in 1999.

Melissa Lubaszka>> She just wants to see people succeed. She
wants to see kids succeed. I mean, what drives her if you see
those kids when they get books that they own that are theirs,
that's all that you need to drive you to do something like this.

Toni Guinyard>> Melissa Lubaszka is a third grade public school
teacher. On this day, she's working as a volunteer, but she
gets something back in exchange for her work. She'll be able to
take a supply of books back to her school.

Melissa Lubaszka>> Access Books gives comic books to teachers
to have in their classrooms and a lot of the teachers don't have
them, but especially with boys at that age, they're great.

Rebecca Constantino>> "And you should take cases of comic books
and all those magazines."

Melissa Lubaszka>> That's what they want to be reading. A lot
of teachers don't have it because they think it's not real
books, but the vocabulary is so much higher even than the books
at the third grade level, so I would see my boys trading comic
books and talking about it and their reading scores jumped so
high just by being exposed to the comic books.

Rebecca Constantino>> People say, you know, they're not
interested in books, these kids. They're not going to read
those books. I have never once gone into a community, any
community, wealthy or poor, that kids didn't want books.

Toni Guinyard>> Just days after meeting Constantino, we caught
up with her during an assembly at St. Michael's School in South
Los Angeles for a celebration of books and reading. The private
school has 280 students, but the library was stocked with fewer
than three hundred books. Constantino and her team of
volunteers from Access Books delivered five hundred books for
the students to take home and six thousand books for the
library.

Lourdes Lucel>> We went on a Saturday and we painted the walls
and fixed the place and carried books.

Toni Guinyard>> What does it look like now compared to how it
looked then?

Lourdes Lucel>> It looks nice and better than before.

Jawanza Harris>> Most of the shelves were empty.

Toni Guinyard>> And now?

Jawanza Harris>> They're all full of books.

Toni Guinyard>> While the school has a library, it no longer
has a library budget, so for years students have had to make do
with the books already on the shelves and, in some cases, that
means checking out books that were published and purchased more
than thirty years ago.

Sister Carol Ward>> The school didn't even have an encyclopedia
that they could go to.

Toni Guinyard>> Sister Carol Ward, St. Michael's principal.

Sister Carol Ward>> This is not an area where a child would
walk to a neighborhood library, where mom and dad would have the
finances to have a huge set of books at home, so what they have
at school is really their access point to be able to have
reading materials. To have somebody come in here and provide
books that they can take home and can also read in a beautiful
environment is huge.

Toni Guinyard>> Access Books also gave the library a new look,
transforming it into an inviting place for students to go and
enjoy reading a book for pleasure.

Kristal Babb>> We didn't have many books and the walls were
like scratched and the paint that we used to have on the walls
were all off and it didn't look good.

Toni Guinyard>> And now?

Kristal Babb>> It looks beautiful.

Toni Guinyard>> It is a reason to celebrate, so before a
backdrop of donated books, Constantino takes on the role of
cheerleader as if daring students not to be excited about
reading. The brief assembly is over within minutes, but in
those few minutes, Constantino hopes she has in some way sparked
an interest in reading that youngsters may carry with them for
the rest of their lives.

Jade Harvey>> I like to read action like Harry Potter, the
books by John Delores, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. I
love A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Toni Guinyard>> What is it about opening up a book that makes
you so excited? You're obviously excited.

Jade Harvey>> Because you're never going to know what's going
to happen next. You never, ever know. But the funnest part is
actually trying to guess what's going to happen next.

Selene Gonzalez>> Well, I feel like I enter another world where
this is the book you're reading and you have to become one of
the characters inside the book.

Toni Guinyard>> Is it fun?

Selene Gonzalez>> Yeah, real fun to read.

Toni Guinyard>> Constantino's research shows students learn to
read by reading. It may appear to be a simple conclusion, but
when books aren't available, it becomes a complicated situation.

Rebecca Constantino>> I'd like to feel that I do the research,
but then I put my money where my mouth is. I don't want to sit
back and wring my hands and say, oh, isn't it sad, it's so
terrible. I want to say, yeah, but look at all these books that
we could bring to them and look at what we could do with the
help of a lot of volunteers.

Toni Guinyard>> But the volunteers take little time to
celebrate the donation of books to one school because there are
so many other students at other schools waiting for books of
their own.

Rebecca Constantino>> "You know what? We give them each a book
before each vacation."

Toni Guinyard>> Each person inspired by seeing for themselves
how important a simple book can be in the eyes of a child.

Jade Harvey>> Because books you can let your mind soar.
Anybody can watch a movie. It's just pictures. But when you
read a book, you can show what happens. You have control.

Val>> If you've got books to donate or would like to learn more
about Project Access Books, you can go to their website at
accessbooks.net.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
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Val>> I'm here at Koreatown and this is the latest internet
café, but it's not just any internet café. This one is
dedicated to seniors. That's right. It's part of a senior
center and these folks are called cyber seniors. They may have
been born at the early part of the twentieth century, but
they're not afraid of twenty-first century technology.

I talked with the Project Director, Nat Kittisarapong, who
graduated from UCLA and is now working at the St. Barnabas
Senior Center in Koreatown. Tell us, how did this come to be?
This is a great idea. Cyber café for seniors.

Nat Kittisarapong>> Right. Two years ago, we started a
computer class for seniors and it became extremely popular.
Then the Executive Director, Martha Spinks, was thinking, well,
one of the biggest problems facing seniors is that seniors are
isolated because, you know, as they get older they lose
connection with their family or their friends. So she wanted to
develop a place where they can be educated about the technology
of today as well as get a bit of a connection with their
society, with their friends and perhaps with their family again.

So she thought, well, the general idea of the cyber café is to
come around and have a cup of coffee, you chat and then you surf
the net a little bit. Well, since a lot of the seniors haven't
had any technological education and the computer class is very
popular, she decided why don't we make a cyber café for seniors?

Val>> So with a grant from the Borchard Foundation and help
from City Councilman, Ed Reyes, the cyber café came together.
Seniors come in for one-on-one tutoring. The ones who know more
teach the others in their own language. Korean is dominant
here.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Nat is also recruiting volunteer teachers from various
universities, ideally college students who can speak Spanish,
Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Tagalog or Armenian.

Nat Kittisarapong>> Usually the ratio is two to one or one to
one. In other words, one volunteer to one senior or two
volunteers to one senior.

Val>> That's great.

Nat Kittisarapong>> Once or twice a week, I try to conduct
advance classes where we teach seniors more of exactly what's
going on in technology today. For instance, I show them like
what a USV Pen is and then I show them how it --

Val>> -- a what?

Nat Kittisarapong>> A USV Pen.

Val>> I don't even know what that is (laughter).

Nat Kittisarapong>> It's like a little pen that can take about
-- it can go from sixty-four megabytes all the way to one gig of
memory and it's about this small. I like to show the seniors
like what's new in the technology world.

Val>> And speaking of technology, the café is well equipped.
There are laser printers, scanners, digital cameras and
PhotoShop. Each senior has his or her own e-mail account and
they can even communicate with seniors at a second cyber café in
Chinatown.

Nat Kittisarapong>> So the seniors in Chinatown can also see
seniors here. What I started some of the seniors on is using
the web cams so that they know how to at least communicate
through an MSN chat so at least they can talk to each other at
nearby computers and see each other and hear each other.

Val>> Now tell me, everyone says, oh, you know, older people
just can't quite get the hang of the Web and even some of them
have trouble clicking the mouse and so forth. What has been
your experience? How quickly do they learn and what are they
interested in?

Nat Kittisarapong>> Like everybody in a small senior community
is very diverse. We have seniors that have worked the computers
for five years, two years. We have seniors that have never seen
a computer, never heard of a computer, don't even know what the
internet is, but the one thing that they all have in common is
the desire to learn.

What I've come to see is that, as long you are patient and as
long as you do a lot of repetition and give very specific
handouts, then they'll learn on their own as well as learn with
a volunteer and they come in to practice very diligently. In
the beginning, when it comes to like clicking with the mouse
and, you know, problems with dexterity, with shaking or
coordination, what you have to do is work with them a couple of
weeks and try to get the hang of it.

Val>> What is the most popular thing for seniors to do on the
Web? Why do they like to get on the Web? What do they do most?

Nat Kittisarapong> Because they have a diverse ethnicity ratio
here, for a lot of the Korean seniors, they like to go on the
Korean news and find out what's going on in their country, find
out, you know, what's going on with their relatives and their
kids. How to e-mail. So the biggest thing right now for the
Korean community is the e-mail and the news. For the rest of
the seniors, it's very diverse.

Some of the seniors like one of our senior teachers is trying to
publish a book on medicinal plants, so he goes on the internet
to check out pictures, to download pictures, as well as to do
some research. Another one of our seniors likes to play games,
so he likes going on the internet for games. Some of the UCLA
students have taught some of the seniors how to play games that
they've been playing at college, so they do these little battles
(laughter). Other seniors have been interested in researching,
if they have old books, how much they can, you know, auction
their books for.

Val>> Oh, I see. Do they get on eBay?

Nat Kittisarapong>> Yes. One of our seniors is particularly
fond of stamps. He buys stamps off eBay like, oh, practically
every day and he's also trying to sell his movie script. So
he's been typing, you know, e-mails to producers and agents and
things like that and trying to get his script sold.

Val>> This is just beginning, right? How many seniors do you
hope will eventually learn? What are your plans? What do you
envision in the future?

Nat Kittisarapong>> I hope that, in the future, the seniors
that have learned will eventually teach new seniors that come
in. I hope this program lasts for many years because one of the
things that I found working here is that seniors have so much
potential and I really, really want the world to see them. The
old saying, "You can never teach an old dog new tricks" is so
wrong, you know what I mean? All it really takes is a little
desire and a lot of practice.

Val>> And the equipment that you've got right here.

Nat Kittisarapong>> And the equipment, right.

Val>> The aim of the cyber café is not only to make seniors
computer-literate, Nat says computer skills could also open up
some part-time job opportunities.

Nat Kittisarapong>> Even though they've retired, a lot of them
still want to work on something. So what we are planning on
perhaps, you know, is creating like a small entrepreneurial
business for them where they can get hired to burn CDs or to
create newsletters or to create, you know, posters, websites,
things like that.

Val>> That's great. Well, Nat, we wish you all the best
because this is a fantastic idea and we really appreciate your
taking a little time with us. Good luck.

Nat Kittisarapong>> Thank you.

Val>> This cyber senior café will also be used as a lab of
sorts to see how a relaxed social environment like this affects
a person's attitude toward aging and technology.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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Val>> Today's reality TV reveals a side of human nature we
haven't seen before, at least not on television. People willing
to eat insects, jump off cliffs and stab each other in the back,
all to win a million dollars. But what if you were an immigrant
and you had a chance to win a green card? That's the idea
behind a controversial program on Spanish-language television.
TV commentator, Cris Franco, gives us his unique take on "Gana
la Verde".

Cris Franco>> Before today's television game show contestants
began competing for prizes like fame and facelifts, they vied
for cash, cruises, cars and trips around the world. Well, now
there's a game show that promises the victor nothing but a
chance to stay right here in the good old U.S.A. via one of
these: a green card. This is "Gana la Verde". Win Your Green
Card is Spanish-language TV's controversial new reality show.

It's not for the faint of heart. Here intrepid contestants
perform outrageous stunts like capturing a greased pig, eating
live worms and becoming an angry attack dog's chew toy, all in
hopes of winning a year's legal aid in acquiring their green
card aka la Verde. Airing weekdays on KRCA-TV in Los Angeles,
this odd mix of "Fear Factor" meets extreme citizenship school
came about when Leonard Liberman of Liberman Broadcasting jogged
into a brainstorm.

Leonard Liberman>> I was jogging one day just out, you know,
like I usually do, running a track, and thought how can I
combine an entertainment program with a service, something that
would be a great value to our market, to our community, and came
up with the "Gana la Verde" idea.

Cris Franco>> And today, Leonard is smiling because his idea is
Latino TV's new hit show seen weekly by an average of one
million bilingual and Spanish-speaking viewers. And how does
this gamey game work? In the first round, six willing
combatants compete in the dare-devilish tasks such as jumping
off a high-speeding truck, washing skyscraper windows, or
wrestling. Four semi-finalists break for a lunch of live
scorpions. None for me. I'm on a low venom diet. And the two
finalists go head to head trying to quickly master a real-life
job such as driving a tow truck, tiling a wall or becoming a
short-order cook in short order. It ends with the winner being
whisked off in a limo to meet his or her new immigration lawyer
-- or a new chiropractor.

But is it always -- I mean, how hard is it to get your green
card? I wanted to find out fast, so I got online. INS.
Online, I learned that U.S. immigration laws are a vast maze of
categories and subcategories, each with its own set of criteria
and costs. That's why, depending on the situation, a green card
could run you from $5,000 to $15,000. All right, it's probably
worth it, but is it wise to let the whole world know your legal
status?

[Film Clip]

Cris Franco>> After seeing my sign, some people gave me a sign
I can't show you on TV. So I went back to ask Mr. Liberman the
obvious question. Do you advise that someone who doesn't have
their papers appear on national television?

Leonard Liberman>> Well, we don't know that they're not here
legally because they're representing to us that they are legal.
So if they're lying to us, we certainly don't investigate and,
you know, report them, but our contestants are legal. They may
be students. They may be tourists. They may be here
temporarily, but they're here and they're allowed to be here.

Cris Franco>> And what happens if the winner doesn't qualify
for residency?

Leonard Liberman>> For instance, if you can't use the legal
representation, for some reason there's something about your
legal case that can't be improved, you can transfer the prize.
So somebody can win and transfer it to a friend, a family member
or an acquaintance.

Cris Franco>> That's why "Gana la Verde" has literally
thousands of aspiring contestants lining up to eat raw cow's
eyes. Talk about watching your diet. And people are competing
for a variety of reasons. Arianna did it because her family
can't afford to hire a lawyer and her present status stops her
from receiving financial aid at UCLA where tuition for non-
residents is $35,000. And why did Elda Fernandez do it?

Elda Fernandez>> Right now, my husband holds the work permit
and I'm his dependent, so my goal in this case is to better my
visa and change from dependent to work permit so I can work.

Cris Franco>> Did you have fun doing the show?

Elda Fernandez>> I had lots of fun. I had a blast.

Cris Franco>> Elda was typical of the "Gana la Verde" spirit I
encountered. Although every competitor seemed to know this hard
truth, that in this life, you've got to risk something to get
something. But will they get something? At the time of this
taping, no victor had actually received a green card. However,
three are hoping to get Hollywood agents (laughter). And they
are all getting lots of attention from human rights activists
like Ms. Myrna Gutierrez.

Myrna Gutierrez>> This isn't about ratings. It's about human
dignity. And the fact that they're asking these people to do
these acts is an act of desperation on their part. It's a show
that they have no choice, that they're willing to do anything
for the American dream. They're further being misled by the
title of the show, which says "Win the Green Card". They cannot
win the green card. Nothing is guaranteed. This is like asking
a homeless person to eat a burrito with live scorpions so they
can get affordable housing, maybe. This is degrading. It's
degrading to our people, to the Latino community.

Cris Franco>> Ms. Gutierrez got me thinking. Is "Gana la
Verde" forcing desperate new arrivals into literally committing
self-immigrant bashing? I went back to Mr. Liberman who was
still waiting for me in the same room in the same suit. What do
you say to people who say that? That you're exploiting human
suffering?

Leonard Liberman>> I think they're uninformed. Basically, I
could be producing the show -- "Fear Factor" is on the air,
"Survivor" is on the air, "The Apprentice" is on the air. All
these shows put people to the same stunts, to the same kinds of
challenges. Yet because they give a cash prize or a job,
they're not criticized. It's only because I'm giving away legal
services that I'm being criticized. So I guess, if I wanted to
give Jose Armani suits for a year, that would be okay. So I
could dress him for success, but I can't give Jose a year's
worth of legal services and help him be a real success. I think
that's just inconsistent and strange.

Cris Franco>> You have to give it one of those Jose's that are
concerned about how wide lapels will be this season, I gather.
And Elda Fernandez agrees.

Elda Fernandez>> I don't feel that anything was dehumanizing
and I tell people that I went to "Gana la Verde", I had fun and
I won. But they degraded you? No, they didn't. But they made
you put tile on the walls. So what? Do they want me to write
like a legal brief? I'm not capable of doing that. Sell roses
or popcorn or something quick. Why is it degrading?

Cris Franco>> Still, human rights organizations are challenging
"Gana la Verde" to be more honest about their show's title. Now
you can't guarantee that they'll get their green card, right?

Leonard Liberman>> Absolutely correct. We cannot guarantee
that. But what we can do is give them access to a board
certified immigration specialist who's really focused on their
case.

Cris Franco>> A board certified immigration specialist?

Leonard Liberman>> That's right.

Cris Franco>> So you go for the top of the line lawyer?

Leonard Liberman>> Top of the line.

Cris Franco>> Italian suits? Italian shoes?

Leonard Liberman>> Italian suits. Armani the whole way.

Cris Franco>> And immigration lawyers warn them of undue
optimism because not everybody qualifies for a green card, no
matter how powerful your attorney might be. But when you think
of some of the other ways of staying legally, such as marrying
someone you don't love, and compared to the perilous journeys
some people have risked just to get here, "Gana la Verde"
doesn't seem so bad. It makes shows that offer you a new home
or a new wife or a new nose seem downright frivolous. "I just
want you to make my nose a little smaller so I look like a young
Antonio Banderas."

These contestants are attempting to change their lives in
concrete-positive ways, giving themselves the best shot they can
get at the American dream which now seems to be risking your
life on national TV. I'm still not certain as to what "Gana la
Verde" says about those needing green cards. However, I think
it says a great deal about the human spirit, and I am sure about
one thing. If eating an insect meant I could save up to $15,000
in legal costs and live in the Land of the Free and the Home of
the Brave, I know what I'd do.

[Film Clip]

Val>> And that story is from U.S. citizen, Cris Franco. And
that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and
Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.