Oh hey, remember how happy you were cheering along Batkid on Friday? Want to feel that feeling EVERY DAY? Safe Passage, a group that helps 4,000 unaccompanied kids walk home from school each day in the Tenderloin needs your help. Specifically, they need volunteers to stand on corners to watch kids get home safely — Corner Captains, is what they're called. Which is downright adorable.
SF Appeal's Max A. Cherney, who penned a great piece on the organization, has the details:
Currently about 4,000 children attend school in the area, according to Dina Hilliard, of the Tenderloin Development Committee. Hilliard participates in a program called Tenderloin Safe Passage, which aims to keep the school children safe by escorting them through some of the more dangerous areas.Data regarding exactly how many of these 4,000 kids walk home unaccompanied is hard to come by.
According to a recent count on a single day at the corner of Turk and Leavenworth — known by Tenderloin cops as “Pill Hill” due to the availability of prescription opiates or “Roxies” — Safe Passage observed 171 children between 2:45 and 3:15 P.M.
If you want to become a Corner Captain, you will get to wear a bright yellow vest (so that the children can identify you) and will be trained how to deal with very Tenderloinesuqe issues (i.e., drug dealing and nearby violence). Further, you'll probably get into heaven. So there's that.
Anyway, our Batkid story garnered almost 90K likes so far. Kids walking home in the TL certainly deserves the same kind of attention. If you'd like to volunteer with Safe Passage, you can find out how to do so here, or email Erin Chen for more info at erin[at]tenderloinsafepassage[dot]com.
