Sunday, January 11, 1998 - Minneapolis Star Tribune
A comfortable, lovingly restored house in the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood on St. Paul's East Side has become a home to some youngsters who might otherwise spend their afternoons after school feeling lonely or courting trouble. Raeann Ruth is the "mom" who restored the house with her husband, Steve, and made the program, Portage for Youth, possible.
Thao examines a concoction of herbs and spices she made during an afternoon at Portage for Youth.
Nicole Egbufoama rolls over judo instructor Jeff Doyone during a class at the Margaret Recreation Center in St. Paul. The class was one of many activities offered through Raeann Ruth's Portage for Youth, an after-school program in St.Paul for girls that aims to help them improve their acedemic and creative skills and build self-esteem.
After-school program helps disadvantaged girls expand horizon
By Robert Franklin - Star Tribune Staff Writer
What does the word "olfactory" relate to?
"Boogers!" shouts one of the girls gathered around the dining-room table.
Sort of. For the next hour, YWCA worker Jill Morrissey explains the human nose and the wonders of smell to 15 excited, curious, wriggling girls. They fill tiny bottles with vanilla and cinnamon, lavender and lemon, then cut the stuff with rubbing alcohol and label the bottles with their names.
The exercise is about as related to traditional schooling as, well, boogers are to olfactory. It's part of Portage for Youth, an after-school girls program heldd in a lovingly restored 100-year-old house in the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood on St. Paul's East Side.
It is very much a home, down to the built-in dining-room hutch, the lace curtains and the bread still warm from baking. It is an atmosphere intended to protect these girls, most of whom know gang members, from impending street dangers of drugs, crime, pregnancy and truancy.
"Mom" is Raeann Ruth, who lives across the street. She restored the house with her husband, Steve, and opened it last February.
Ruth, 48, is a former church business administrator who grew up in an outdoorsy St. Paul family, taught swimming and graduated from St. Croix Lutheran High School. She married at 18, gave birth to a son and then, as a single mother, led a street existence for a decade.
"There's nothing you can think of that I haven't done or hasn't happened to me," she said.
She's been married for 17 years to Steve Ruth, used-car manager at Park Jeep Eagle in Burnsville, and has a daughter in high school. She saw the need for Portage for Youth while volunteering on the parents' council at Mounds Park All-Nations School and as a leader of wilderness trips.
She knows the streets
Ruth fought to get grants, recruited volunteers and lined up programs in areas as diverse as nutrition, photography, computer skills, literacy, judo, money management and women's studies.
"It's actually like raising 19 other kids," she said, wearing her trademark overalls. But she has the advantage of knowing that "there's nothing they could pull off that I haven't done."
So her programs concentrate on better things to pull off.
For instance, the 8- to 14-year- old girls have grown their own vegetables, have met women in such nontraditional jobs as firefighter and police officer and have visited a jail and a judge.
They visited a law library lined with photos of retired judges. "There's no women here" noted Nicole Egbufoama, who decided that maybe the wall will include her picture someday.
Some photos of their own will be on display starting Friday at the St. Paul YWCA as part of tow photo mentoring projects.
The girls, on their portage from youth to adulthood, have been wild enough to drive a few volunteers out of the program, and they are "some of the kids schoolteachers said would never listen," Ruth said.
But they can be respectful and usually are eager learners. A couple of the girls were practically crawling up on the dining-room table during Morrissey's demonstration. Julia Porras reeled off a long list of things she likes about the program including the chance to dress up in the formals that Ruth bought for the girls at Godwill.
They also have learned etiquette and home to dine with china, sterling and goblets. "We do things they probably never would have a chance to do a home." Ruth said, and that may include something as simple as celebrating their birthdays.
They can do anything
"I think most of these girls, after a year, think they can do anything," Ruth said, but even she is surprised sometimes.
"Oh, my god, is that cool!" she exclaimed when three of them were promoted to second-degree white belt at their judo class Tuesday night at an East Side recreation center. "They're really working, and it's paying off."
The payoff for Ruth is in satisfaction but not, so far, in money. "I never thought this would get off the ground," she said. "I wrote 120 gran [proposals] and got 120 no's"
Portage received close to $30,000 in government, foundation and individual support last year, and Ruth said, "I might get a salary this year," which would be something new.
But there are other needs. The program has a waiting list and needs a bigger house. When Ruth received a Virginia McKnight Binger Award in Human Service last month, she was nervous but had the presence of mind to say she needs a bigger van for the program.
She's also brimming with plans and ideas - to take the girls camping this summer at a former Boy Scout camp on an island in Bay Lake, to teach piano, to give them a horse program with her daughter Amber, to start a newspaper, perhaps to start a small store on East 7th Street as an alternative to fast-food work.
Sometimes her board has to rein her in and say, "we can't quite do that yet," said Tienne Otteson, a Portage volunteer and board member who is vice president of the insurance agency at Western Bank.
Otteson said Ruth came to her for insurance, and "suddenly I found myself a mentor, doing women's studies. . . . She suckered me in, big time."
It's the same with the girls. "They work real hard at the Portage," Ruth said. "They just don't know they're working."
Raeann Ruth, right, works with Gao Yee and Tokala Charging Thunder at Portage for Youth, and after-school program for 8- to 15-year-old girls.The program was the brainchild of Ruth.
