SENIORS HELP KIDS COMPUTE FUTURE.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY

This is a case study on how it should work: senior citizens helping youngsters who might otherwise have fallen through the cracks in the education system but instead are learning to stand on their own.

Even the best schools can't do it alone. They need the help of people like Roger Poverny, Larry Nye, Nina Van Leeuwen and their computer-savvy friends who decided it was time to give something back to their community.

What they decided to give was a fighting chance at success for hundreds of local kids from low-income families - kids who, for the most part, don't even go home after school. They spend three or four hours at the West Valley Boys & Girls Club in Canoga Park because their working parents don't want them coming home to an empty apartment.

They want them supervised and spending their time around other kids - hopefully learning something that will help them get ahead in the future.

In today's world, that means sitting at a computer.

That's why Kelsy Maruyama, executive director of the West Valley Boys & Girls Club, keeps looking over her shoulder these days to see whether she can spot that angel that landed on it a few weeks ago.

``We had a computer lab years ago, but the computers broke or became obsolete and we never had the money to replace them,'' Maruyama said Monday, as some of the more than 100 children who come here every day arrived.

``It's funny, but I was just thinking about trying to build our technology center back up again for these kids when the phone rang one day,'' Maruyama said.

It was Nye, past president of the Kiwanis Club of Northridge. His club had joined forces with Tugnet - a club of personal-computer users in the San Fernando Valley.

The group had just refurbished 20 Pentium II or faster computers and donated them to Robert Frost Middle School in Granada Hills, and it was upgrading 15 more. Was the West Valley Boys & Girls Club interested in them?

Maruyama smiled and looked over her shoulder for that angel.

``It's been a godsend. The kids can do their homework on the computer now, and we've installed music, photography, Internet safety programs and how-to programs for them to learn on.

``These are kids who don't have a computer to work on at home. This is it for many of them.''

At Frost Middle School, the donated computers are helping students who scored low on remedial reading tests.

``Having these computers to work on could make the difference between success and failure, that's how important this contribution is,'' said Assistant Principal Dave Tiefen.

That's exactly what Tugnet members were thinking last year when they ended one of their Tuesday night meetings with suggestions on ways they could impact their community.

``One of our members said his law firm was upgrading its computers, and maybe we could get their old ones donated,'' said Poverny.

``We wrote them a letter, telling them what we wanted to do with the computers, and they wound up giving us 31. We then teamed up with Kiwanis. It had the contacts in the community of children who could use the computers we were refurbishing in our garages.''

Both California State University, Northridge, and Simi Valley Adventist Hospital were already donating computers to the Kiwanis for distribution to nonprofit organizations in the community.

Soon, word spread about what the computer club was doing, and more businesses donated their old computers. The club also passed the hat to its 250 members to raise money for new modems, speakers and sound cards.

``In the world today, computers are too important for kids not to have access to,'' Nye said. ``You can't send these kids out into the work force without the knowledge to use them.''

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

John Peiselac, 7, foreground, and other kids now have the chance to work on computers at the West Valley Boys & Girls Club thanks to a group of seniors and their computer-savvy friends who are giving back to the community.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer