A Complex Mission to Save Kids
Berks Community Action Program (BCAP)
Told by Larry Berringer, Stephan Fains,
Seleda Simmons, and Henry Calvo
Written by Laurie Grobman
Larry Berringer, Executive Director of the Berks Community Action Program (BCAP) in Reading, was a member of the first gang in Reading, Front and Buttonwood Street. It was in the most impoverished neighborhood in the city in the 1960s and 1970s when he was in high school: “There was nobody tougher than me. There was nobody more involved in gang activity than me.”
But Larry was saved from the streets by the United States Army: “It changed my life. I went from my informal social background and social norms to a formal structural system. They saw something in me, abilities. And they made something out of me.”
Most of his friends from the neighborhood are not as fortunate. About half of them are deceased. Most of the others are professional criminals and lifelong members of various detention facilities, county jails, prisons, and federal penitentiaries. Those who have aged out of the prison cycle have no wealth and live off about $780 a month.
Larry loves this city, his neighborhood, and the group he grew up with. People he knows in their 80s and 90s still live in the neighborhood he grew up in. His sisters are there. His mother, a Hungarian immigrant who came to this country in 1956 during the Hungarian Revolution, recently passed, but she lived in the same house for almost 70 years. That row home was everything to her. Reading was the promise land for her.
BCAP is a private non-profit organization that combats poverty in Reading and Berks County and to help low- and moderate-income residents become more self-sufficient. In this city that he loves, Larry’s mission as Executive Director of BCAP is to save Reading’s kids from violence, a “complex mission” with multiple factors.
Larry Berringer
A Complex Mission Needs the Right Staff
Like Larry, nearly all BCAP staff come from the Reading streets, and they have the cultural competencies, knowledge, skills, attitude, and abilities to do what needs to be done. These are the credentials Larry prioritizes: “You have to be able to understand how the aspects of culture and dynamics overlap in Reading. And you only know that if you lived it. It’s hard to get it out of a textbook.” And the staff must commit to and care deeply about saving Reading’s youth from violence, whether as perpetrators or/and victims.
Henry Calvo, Seleda Simmons, Stephan Fains
Stephan Fains, BCAP’s Director of Community Engagement, “loves, loves, loves Reading PA. Everything I am is this place.” As a young kid, Stephan grew up in Glenside. He only knew people that lived in Glenside. He thought the whole world looked like Glenside.
When he and his family moved to Reading’s North side, Stephan was hustling in the streets, doing whatever he had to do to make his own money and his own way. He was “a kid in Reading just trying to find his own way,” and “just thought that’s the way everyone acted.”
Stephan had a brother in the NBA at the time, who’d say to him, “Man, you need to get off them corners.” Stephan would tell him, “Every single one of my friends is there. Everybody I’m with is there. So you tell me what I’m supposed to do. Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do?” He didn’t know that what he was doing was wrong until he was around 25: “I was just a kid of Reading even though I had a brother in the NBA.”
Larry offered Stephan a job with the Census in 2000 and he took it. It was the “first big-time job” he was ever offered. Working with Larry showed Stephan a whole new way of life. From there, Stephan worked at the Olivet Boys and Girls Club and Sneaker Villa and got involved in the community by coaching a lot of kids and teams.
Now, Stephan uses his experiences to let others know “there are places that look like this where everybody our age is starting their own business and really understanding life while we think we got to be on a corner somewhere.” Why, he asks, does no one tell the guy who’s an amazing drug dealer that he’s really a good businessman?
Nine years ago, Larry approached Stephan to lead a BCAP Fathership Initiative. He told Stephan, “You’re the man for the job. I know who you are since birth.” Larry and Stephan’s mother are like brother and sister. Stephan was terrified. He’d grown up without a father. And he was still a young father. But Larry told him he’d do well. And he did.
Stephan does the work because he loves Reading and because he and his friends were hustling on the streets. He is grateful for having found a different path when most others he grew up with did not: “I got friends still locked up. I got friends every year who come into my office, and I’m helping them get past things that they’ve done in the past. And even they’ll say, ‘Man, even when we were young doing stupid stuff, you would say, don’t do this. Don’t do that. So it was like I was kind of made to do this.”
Stephan wants others in the city, especially kids, to learn that he did it, and they can too:
I didn’t go to college and graduate. I didn’t do all that stuff. I just stuck it out, had good mentors, listened to them. And once I got an opportunity, I took it. And that’s the biggest thing is to take opportunities even if you’re terrified. I was terrified and look how I ended up. I got plaques on my walls.
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BCAP’s FAST (Family Assistance and Support for Teens) Coordinator, Seleda Simmons, was kicked out of her mother’s home at age 13 after Seleda tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pills. Seleda stayed temporarily with an aunt, but soon left her home. By 14, Seleda was in an abusive relationship and lived on the streets, at times sleeping on benches in City Park. Soon after being detained in a juvenile detention center, Seleda ran. When she was caught at 15, Seleda’s mother emancipated her, no longer willing or able to take care of her daughter. Seleda was on her own, living in what she describes as “survival mode”- selling drugs, participating in shootouts, and living in and out of jail.
All of that began to change for Seleda at 24 when she learned she was pregnant. It was clear to her that she wanted to be a mother and keep her son. Seleda stopped selling drugs and stayed out of jail but faced tremendous obstacles. Seleda had a lot to learn about being a woman: “I had the streets teach me about being a woman. I had, for the past 10, 11 years, had the streets being my mother, my father, my teacher, my guidance counselor, the whole nine yards.”
She became a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), later enrolled in Reading Area Community College and realized how much she loved learning, and then became a lead tech at Haven Mental Health Facility in Reading. There for two years, Seleda heard many stories from many patients and learned that “life handles everybody, deals with everybody on so many different levels.” Seleda realized “who I want to be and what I want to do.” She founded the nonprofit The Real Deal 610 in 2020 to support community members with self-betterment through services and resources on mental health awareness, youth advocacy against gun violence, and convicted felon fairness. Doing so also led her to Larry and BCAP.
A family member who knew how passionate Seleda was about the work of the Real Deal 610 convinced Seleda in 2021 to meet Larry. She walked into Larry’s office, and Larry said, “What do you need?” And Seleda “being who I was at that time, got offended. And I was like, ‘I don’t need anything from you. I just want to know how to do the work so I can do it on my own.’” Larry told her she could have a free office in the BCAP building and said, “Go around the corner to that office and be great.” He’s been Seleda’s mentor ever since.
In 2023, Larry hired Seleda as a staff member of BCAP. He told her, “We got this opportunity with a grant for an initiative. It’s pretty much what you already do. I love what you do. I know how you do it. Do you want to do it?” Seleda is doing it.
Larry Berringer, Seleda Simmons, Stephan Fains
Henry Calvo
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Henry Calvo, TEENS (Take Each and Every Necessary Step) program Coordinator, was born in Reading, lived here through fifth grade, and returned with his family again in ninth grade. Even at that age, he saw a difference in the city he’d lived in as a younger boy. His friends that weren’t talking to each other anymore because of money problems and girlfriend problems. That experience helps Henry in his career working with youth and teens because he can relate to teens, understanding that now is the time they are starting to feel these feelings that they’d never felt before. He thinks it’s especially hard for many kids in Reading because a lot of their parents are still teens.
Henry attended the Olivet Boys and Girls Club as a teen, playing for the Clinton Street Olivet basketball team. That’s where he first met Stephan, who helped as a basketball
coach. Stephan influenced Henry in so many ways: “He was a great role model. Anything I ever needed, I always went to him. I couldn’t find answers from my parents about how to maneuver in the streets or where I shouldn’t be. Stephan always had his door open to me and my brothers.”
Henry’s dedicated practicing, showing up on time, and giving a lot of effort in the games led the Olivet Clinton director, Mrs. Dolores, to hire Henry for a job in summer camp. He worked at the front desk since he was bilingual. Meeting so many kids and their parents taught Henry a lot. He was eager to learn: “I was always trying to understand more about each kid, why they’re coming here upset, why they’re coming here happy, why are their parents are always just dropping them off here right after school Monday through Friday and picking them up at 8 o’clock at night, knowing they’re probably just going to go home and eat, shower, and go back to sleep, and then repeat it all over again.” This is the background Henry brings to his work at BCAP.
The Complex Mission – Combatting Youth Violence in Reading
The BCAP team understands poverty as the root cause of violence.
If you have the means to be honest, you’re honest all the time because you don’t have to lie. But if you got to lie, you’re going to lie to feed your family. You’ll prostitute to feed your family. You’ll prostitute to get high if you’re addicted to drugs. You’ll rob. You’ll kill. You’ll do all these dysfunctional social norms that we call immoral because you have no recourse because you have no resources.
But today’s youth and teens face a more violent Reading than the BCAP staff knew growing up: “The level of violence, and the uncaring, the ability not to engage in what we would call normal human behavior, where you don’t see anybody as a human. It’s just atrocious.” They see 12, 13, and 14-year-olds who kill for no apparent reason other than you’re in a different
group (gang) and to prove to the higher-ups, who are 15, 16, and 17-year-olds, that they’re tough. Then they spend years in and out of detention centers and prisons and become more hardened and violent.
Other kids make their own small crews that are like informal gangs. Five or six people who live in the same area call themselves a gang with whatever name they made up. And with social media, some youth make gangs online and never leave their house.
Drill music is another factor, far worse than gangster rap: “Go kill your enemy and post it on social media. Be as filthy as you can about it. It’s who can be the worst bad guy.” The “real gangsters” Stephan grew up with “would have never done these things. They would have never posted a picture of someone that was killed and laugh about it and talk to their mom on social media about the things that these kids are. It’s a culture. Cultural norms are the hardest norms to break.”
BCAP staff see kids behaving in the schools in ways that shock them. As Henry and Seleda walked down the hallways, one of the kids looked at them, “What the F are you looking at? Don’t be looking.” They think that respect for everyone is gone. Drill music uses the term “savage.” “You’re not a savage if you care.”
What’s also changed is how many girls join gangs. Two girls last year shot two boys, and others got into a lot of fights at Reading high school. They fought teachers, the cops, the security guards. One of the girls Seleda works with is a leader. Anywhere she goes, she has at least 10 other girls and boys with her. And she’s ready to fight.
In one gang, girls get initiated into the gang by having sex with somebody that is a part of the gang. Lots of them. Then they’re able to get away with things that the boys can’t. They’re doing pretty much everything that a boy is doing. “There are no limits to what they will or won’t do.”
BCAP Programming for Youth and Teens
Under Larry’s leadership, BCAP has put a lot of its resources into youth violence intervention and prevention through education. The staff start teaching, coaching, counseling, and mentoring at the Family Center through age 3, in Pre-K Counts, and HEAD Start.
They sponsor athletic programming and have added a wide spectrum of other activities focusing on creativity. “These kids may have an interest in something but don’t even know it. They may have a skill or ability. Somebody’s got to nurture it. Somebody’s got to give them the resources so that they can do it.”
Henry emphasizes the need to offer multiple types of programs for kids. BCAP offers violin and guitar lessons. They sponsored some of the kids who played the National Anthem when Vice President Kamala Harris visited Reading in September 2023. They fund a program with the Reading Musical Foundation to get kids instruments and music lessons. They gave startup money to the Reading Film Office and the Reading School District for kids who want to do film. They sponsor the Teen Writing Club at the Reading Public Library and the Drama Club at Reading High. By doing several activities, such as basketball, writing, a pizza club, art, that’s kids all at one time getting support, and it leads them to trust the organization: “the same people feeding us also gave us writing, also gave us back to school supplies, also gave us Christmas stuff.”
The activities help lead to bonds with the kids. Some of the kids take on leadership roles in the programs. And others, who graduate, come back, such as a young woman who came back to the Teen Writing Club asking to lead a session. Henry’s proud that this kid growing up in poverty wants to come back, start a business, and give back to her community.
When he’s not with the teens, Henry stays connected online. He starts his day with a social media check. Usually, the kids or teens will ask what programs are coming out or tell him what interests them. They also have a teen phone that kids text on to find out what activities are happening around the city as well as through BCAP: “If they’re interested in
joining the Olivet Boys and Girls Club, Reading Recreation, or a club going on that we’re aware of, we’ll tell them and their parents.”
BCAP Programming- Support for Families and Their Teens
Seleda runs a BCAP program called Family Assistance and Support for Teens (FAST) that tries to account for families’ various needs so families can support their teens. Many parents are growing up with their kids and don’t have the life experience or resources to meet their kids’ needs. When a parent comes to BCAP with a teen, the teen meets with Henry, and the parent with Seleda. Seleda tries to meet any need that will help the parent to be successful so their kids can be safe.
They’re people that are in a vulnerable position. I know how to talk to them. I know how to not talk down to them. I know how to make them feel comfortable. I know how to get the truth out of them. I can tell when I’m being taken advantage of and when I’m not. And they know that. I’m able to create relationships with my clients to where I empower them to want to do better for themselves and feel like they actually can. I use my own story, my own experiences as demonstration when it comes to having interaction with them.
You’re not being judged. Your information is private. And you’re being respected completely, regardless of your circumstance.
Seleda calls BCAP a one-stop shop. They’re not sending clients all over the city for services. When she gets a new client, Seleda and the client create an in-depth goal plan of their essential needs right then and also other things they need so they don’t end back up with those essential immediate needs again. Do they need a job? Do they have a resume? Are they aware of budgeting? Do they know about credit? The FAST program provides these services there. When parents come in with older teens, they both work on resumes together.
Seleda recently worked with two 21-year-old females living in a shelter. Both had two kids. Now, one has a job and is about to move to her new place. She got a bank account and signed up upstairs for therapy sessions. The other one is getting parenting classes. She still doesn’t have her own place, but she has a job.
Many of the parents who come to FAST don’t speak English, and that puts a burden on the kids. They must go to the stores, go to the school, go to the doctor to translate. They’re not even able to be kids because their parents don’t have the necessary fundamentals so that
they can be successful on their own without their kids. And they have too much to deal with. Kids are losing one, two, three friends that they’ve just been with, but we send them right to school and say, “You still need to go to school and act right. You still need to go to school and get good grades.” They’re expected to do things that adults can’t even do and make decisions that adults can’t even make.
Seleda looks to programming with longevity in mind. It’s got to make an impression, “something that the kids will be able to say tomorrow and the next that, “Wow. I know
sometimes we go through a lot, but there really are people that actually care about my mental state, about my well-being, whether I eat, whether I sleep, me being successful today, tomorrow, the next.” The 2023 teen fashion show was one of those experiences.
There were roles for models, creators, and designers. A professional designer guided and directed, but he didn’t sew, didn’t cut, didn’t measure. The teens did all of it. One of the teens got a scholarship to keep working with the mentor.
Two of the models were gang members and at first didn’t want to model. But Seleda and her team convinced them, and once they did it, they were amazed, especially when they got a scholarship to work with professional models.
For the many teens involved, it was life changing. They were able to be in a space that was unfamiliar to them. They were with important community leaders. Every audience member clapped and rejoiced for every kid in that room. The teens were able to be themselves and
not be judged in any way, shape, or form, and feel invited just by them being them and be creative in their own way.
The teens also formed relationships and friendships. Many didn’t know each other, but they’re still connected. (Seleda knows because she’s on group chats with them). Seleda used the fashion show as a platform for more. “Every time we had a meeting, every time they had a session, there was a conversation. You’re obligated to each other. You’re responsible for her. He’s responsible for him. You are all responsible for each other. That means making smart decisions.”
Saving as Many Kids as They Can
That’s how the BCAP family works – a sense of responsibly to every kid, every parent, and every person who needs help, and with one another. They extend that philosophy and practice outward, too, with strong relationships with community partners: “There’s nothing that we always think that we should do by ourselves. You can’t fix a community if you don’t work as a community.”
Larry and the BCAP team know they can’t save all kids from Reading’s street culture and violence. But they do everything they can to save as many kids as they can. “Each kid saved is a victory. And each kid saved might save a friend, who might save a friend, and so on.”