PROGRAM RESCUES AT-RISK YOUTH

MVP steers kids away from gang path and into good schools

By Edgar Sanchez

esanchez@sacbee.com

By age 9, Jose Sepulveda was lost. Living aimlessly, he seemed ready to join the gang that congregated near his Sacramento school.

Then his mother intervened.

She transferred Jose to the Moral Values Program, a Sacramento nonprofit that directs at-risk youths away from gangs and toward success.

Five years later, Sepulveda, 14, is about to receive his junior high diploma through MVP. This fall, he will attend Christian Brothers High School on a scholarship.

And he is not alone.

Christian Brother - one of the city's most prestigious private schools - has also awarded scholarships to six other eighth-graders who will graduate from MVP on June 12. And three other members of MVP's class of 2008 have been accepted to Cristo Rey High School in south Sacramento, with two waiting to be placed.

The 12-member graduating class is the largest in MVP's 14-year history, MVP Directors Frank and Monica Victorio said.

"It's an overwhelming feeling to see these kids on their way to high-powered schools," Frank Victorio said, noting that never before has MVP had so many scholarship recipients.

The seven bound for Christian Brothers will face a rigorous curriculum that will prepare them for college, school officials said.

The campus "welcomes students from all walks of life," and it is blessed by the resulting diversity, Christian Brothers President Lorcan Barnes said in a statement.

"Frank and Monica Victorio devote themselves to preparing young people for success in life and in high school," Barnes said. "We...work to prepare them for success in college and life."

The Victorios founded MVP in 1994 to help rescue young lives that were being lost to gang membership. The couple also began helping other failing students, who, according to the Victorios, had been denied the necessary support form public schools staff.

The Victorios turned their tiny 32nd Avenue home into an after-school center, where at-risk children could get help with homework. Today, the home is visited by more than 100 children from all grade levels.

From the outset, the Victorios have stressed timeless values, including courtesy, integrity and perseverance - values they incorporated into MVP's home-schooling program, which began in 2002.

The school year, 21 boys and girls are being home-schooled, using a curriculum provided by the California Virtual Academy, or CAVA, a state-accredited public charter.

The tuition-free classes are taught in a one-room learning center, next to the Victorio family home. The lead teacher is Laura Caraccio, a former volunteer in Mother Theresa's homes in Calcutta.

With some exceptions, most MVP students are from troubled, one-parent households, Caraccio said.

Most, she added, "had to overcome a self-perception of not being smart enough, of being D and F students."

Until 2003, Sepulveda was one of those wayward youngsters.

"I really didn't pay attention to school," said the former student at Pacific Elementary School. "The teachers told me to do things, and I didn't like people telling me what to do."

Added Sepulveda: "I wasn't necessarily in a gang, but I was on the path to being a gang member." He said he was hanging out with gang-bangers who would congregate outside Pacific Elementary.

"They were older, high school-age dropouts," he said.

In 2003, Sepulveda's mother, a housecleaner, placed her son in MVP's home-schooling, about the time that Jose's father left the family.

At first, Sepulveda remained defiant, unwilling to learn.

Now, he projects the image of a bright young man eager to continue his education.

"Attending Christian Brothers has been my goal...," Sepulveda said. "If I go there I have more chances of going to college than if I go to other schools."

"With the values that I've learned at MVP, I feel that I'm going to make it."

Like his fellow MVP eighth-graders, Sepulveda will get after-school tutoring from MVP during his high school years.

On May 10, Leila Abu-Hijleh, 23, became the latest former MVP pupil to get a college degree. She graduated from Holy Names University near Oakland with a bachelor's degree in education.

At least 10 former MVP students remain in college.

MVP receives no government grants. It depends on private donations to support its services.

For more details, visit: www.mvpsacramento.com