Organization provides education, guidance for low-income youth

Max Zahn
Andre Vanterpool, the program director at the Manhasset-Great Neck Economic Opportunity Council

Looking out the window of his second-story office, Andre Vanterpool said he can just about see the place where he grew up.

“I lived right here on the hill,” he said, referring to both the street below and the low-income community of Spinney Hill, which lies on the border between Manhasset and Great Neck. “It was kind of a no-brainer to come back and serve my community.”

Vanterpool is the program director at the Manhasset-Great Neck Economic Opportunity Council, which provides pre-kindergarten, after school programs, summer programs, counseling and other services for low-income youth and families in the area.

He said some people are surprised by the need for such services in a Long Island suburb thought to be uniformly affluent.

“There’s definitely a perception in the Manhasset community where the Spinney Hill community is looked at as a separate community,” Vanterpool said. “The community is so separate people aren’t aware that we even exist over here.”

The Manhasset-Great Neck Economic Opportunity Council has operated since 1966, when it took up residence in the two-story school building on High Street that it occupies today.

“The community has changed a lot since those years,” said Stephanie Chenault, the organization’s executive director and the director of its Head Start early-education program.

Chenault began with the council as a student teacher in 1971 and has worked there ever since.

“When I first started virtually all the children were African-American,” she said. “There weren’t Hispanic students, or Asian, Indian, Persian.”

She said the organization’s increased diversity has brought change because “the needs are different.”

The organization has hired multilingual staff members and begun incorporating the cultural heritage of many different ethnic groups, she said.

Each year the Head Start early-education program enrolls as many as 56 students and the summer program involves as many as 80 students, Chenault said.

An education non-profit called Adventures in Learning runs an after school program out of the High Street building that involves as many as 80 students, she added.

Vanterpool, who provides counseling for children and their families, sought the organization’s programs when he was growing up in the 1990s.

“I was part of a huge basketball program,” he said. “We traveled locally to places like Westbury and Glen Cove. Teams from Germany came to play against us.”

Vanterpool went on to play Division I basketball at Stony Brook University, where he received his master’s in social work in 2009.

“We’re trying to prepare kids for the next stage of their lives, whether work or college,” he said. “Kids don’t know the options they have.”

He helps the children and young adults “build confidence in themselves” and “believe in an education system that’s there to help because students often don’t feel that way.”

He said members of the Manhasset and Great Neck communities often volunteer to support the organization’s programs, though the group could always use more help.

Financial support from the Manhasset Community Fund and the Green Tree Foundation enable the council’s summer offerings, he added.

 The federal government funds the Head Start early-education program and Nassau County subsidizes many of the youth programs, Chenault said.

“It’s a juggling act with the county. Sometimes they cut spending and then restore money,” she added.

Going forward, the group is looking to make improvements to its gymnasium and expand its services.

“We’d love to increase our programming,” Chenault said. “Life skills, parenting, more adult education with computers and English second language.”

“We’re rebuilding the community over again,” Vanterpool said. “As people leave there has to be a sense of community that’s tight. Especially bridging the gap of what’s on Spinney Hill.”

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