Seneca Street CDC: homework help (and so much more)

By Devon Dams-O'Connor
April 30, 2024

Buffalo Magazine — A lanky second grader munches apple slices while circling sight words on a worksheet. A tutor arrives to help his brother make sense of math. Upstairs, two tweens trade middle school gossip and paint their nails. It’s not home, but to students in this neighborhood after-school program, it sure feels like it.

Volunteer mentors and staff offer enrichment activities, including chess lessons, each day, allowing students to explore different hobbies and interests.

Photography / Alana Adetola Arts

The after-school program is offered by the Seneca Street Community Development Corporation (CDC), a non-profit community center that fills three floors of the Seneca Street United Methodist Church. As an organization whose mission is to break the cycle of generational poverty, afternoon activities for neighborhood youth in grades K-12 are laser-focused on homework surrounded by enrichment, social support and plenty of love.

Melanie Skorma-Janesz, Seneca Street CDC youth program director, joined the center 10 years ago as a tutor and now runs the after-school and summer programs and coaches its Girls on the Run team.

“This is a safe environment for kids to succeed,” she says. “There’s continuity in seeing the same kids almost every day and really getting to know them for years.”

A St. Patrick's Day party back in March offered special activities for all ages, including themed art opportunties, a create-your-own slime station, face painting and a visit from the exotic animals of Mark Cara's Fascinature.

Photography / Alana Adetola Arts

On a map, the Seneca-Babcock neighborhood of Buffalo sits wedged between Larkinville and Kaisertown, just above South Buffalo and below the East Side. It’s one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, but with close-knit families who have lived there for generations, the wealth of folks looking out for each other is palpable.

That feeling of a protective but firm family extends into the center itself. Four school days a week, nearly 50 kids from 16 schools arrive at 3 p.m. in a parade of yellow busses. A mom from the neighborhood volunteers every day to usher kids off the bus and greet each one by name.

From there, the priorities are a healthy snack, homework and tutoring, dinner and fun. A long list of activities include opportunities more affluent families can afford, like photography, art, chess, sports, clubs, music lessons, cooking and visits by organizations like the SPCA, plus the chance to grab school supplies or extra food for home if they need it.

Seneca Street CDC summer programs offer the same supportive atmosphere with plenty to do, plus opportunities for high school students to earn community service hours at the church and a paycheck in the Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program. Students want to come to the center, Melanie says, because they can be themselves, get help if they need it, meet friends from other schools and have choices in their day.

Both after-school and summer programs are offered at no cost to families.

All six of Alicia Casey’s kids, ranging in age from 8 to 17, head to the Seneca Street CDC almost every day—just like their mom did. Casey became one of the center’s first students when Seneca Street CDC absorbed the church’s youth programs back when she was in high school. Now she works there, doing a little bit of everything like decorating for holidays and doling out snacks.

“To my kids this is their second home, and a lot of the kids feel that.” says Alicia. “If my kids aren’t sick, they’re here.”

The center’s unabashed pride in its students’ accomplishments is written all over the walls—literally. A cork board next to the stage boasts copies of report cards and awards earned at school. On the back wall of the cafeteria are the handprints of kids from the center who graduated from high school.

And next to it, a growing trail of painted footprints left by CDC students who graduated from college, inviting little ones from the neighborhood to follow in their footsteps.