[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 9]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 12003]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                    TRIBUTE TO THE REV. DAVID KALKE

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. JOE BACA

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 26, 2001

  Mr. BACA. Mr. Speaker, I rise to salute a constituent of mine, the 
Reverend David Kalke, recipient of a 2001 Robert Wood Johnson Community 
Health Leadership Award, for his work in creating a ``safe zone'' for 
our youth. The award is the nation's highest honor for community health 
leadership and includes a $100,000 program grant.
  The Reverend Kalke has done remarkable work with teen health and 
education programs in an area of San Bernardino, CA, known to have the 
state's highest teen pregnancy and STD rates and marked incidents of 
violence. The original core of 12 teens has since grown to over 100 
youths a year.
  Because of these efforts, he is one of 10 outstanding individuals 
selected this year to receive a $100,000 Robert Wood Johnson Community 
Health Leadership Program award.
  You know, Mr. Speaker, it is important that we give the children 
hope. That we give them a chance. A helping hand up. A chance to have a 
mentor, to have someone believe in them. Because through that 
confidence in them comes confidence in themselves. The Reverend Kalke 
has done that. I think we must all remember the role models in our 
lives, and remember those who inspired us to see the possibilities. So 
we can all understand what it is for a child to have the sort of 
opportunities, the sort of chance that the Reverend Kalke has given 
them.
  The Reverend Kalke has a long history of public service and 
involvement with serving our youth. His deeply held beliefs that the 
church should be actively involved in the community began with a 
mission to Chile during the 1970s. He eventually returned to New York 
City where he led a Lutheran church congregation and initiated a broad 
array of community programs in the South Bronx.
  In 1996, he was asked by the Lutheran church to revive a struggling 
church in a poverty-stricken section of San Bernardino, CA, known to 
have the State's highest teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted 
disease rates, as well as one of the highest incidences of gang-related 
violence.
  From the beginning, his vision faced obvious risks. His church, the 
Central City Lutheran Mission (CCLM), was abandoned with no established 
community ties and a regular risk of violence from area youth gangs. To 
gain the neighborhood's trust, Kalke hired local teens to help clean up 
the site, offering to pay small salaries while they undertook peer HIV/
AIDS health educator training. The original core of 12 teens has since 
grown to over 100 youths a year, working, learning and volunteering in 
what has become a gang-free, safe space in the midst of a devastated 
neighborhood.
  Admirers have observed: ``Not since Escalante worked his magic in 
teaching calculus to poor minority kids in East Los Angeles has anyone 
witnessed the dedication, caring, knowledge and skills of David Kalke 
in assisting `throw away' kids in a `throw away' neighborhood to learn 
ways to improve their own and the neighborhood's existence.''
  CCLM's programs now include: an adolescent health program which 
employs peer educators to teach HIV, STD and teen pregnancy prevention; 
an after school program for 50 children between the ages of 5-12 to 
help with homework and nutrition; and, a teen day-school for suspended, 
expelled or home-study students. CCLM's cultural programs include art, 
writing and photography. Teens publish a newsletter of poems, drawings 
and photographs on the realities of inner city life.
  The Reverend Kalke has also raised federal and city funding to 
rehabilitate abandoned homes and turn them into transitional housing 
for homeless HIV+ persons.
  In order to create these programs he has effectively pulled together 
numerous partners including other churches, California State University 
at San Bernardino (Cal State) and the city council. Cal State's Social 
Work, Public Health and Communications Departments regularly send 
interns and nursing students to conduct 9-month internships at CCLM.
  The CCLM programs have transformed hundreds of individual lives, 
giving food, shelter, education, safety and hope where there was none.
  And so we honor the Reverend Kalke, and we salute him, for his 
achievement and his commitment to our youth.

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