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Don Bosco Center needs to relocate from Manassas’ Georgetown South neighborhood

Mary Stachyra Lopez | Catholic Herald Social Media Coordinator

Fr. Ramon Dominguez, director of the Don Bosco Center in Manassas’ Georgetown South neighborhood, talks to Edwin Martinez, 14, and staff member Liz Kestermann on a recent Friday afternoon. MARY STACHYRA LOPEZ | CATHOLIC HERALD

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Jessica Morales helps Rafael Morales, 13, with homework after school at the Don Bosco Center in Manassas. MARY STACHYRA LOPEZ | CATHOLIC HERALD

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Jessica Morales helps Rafael Morales, 13, with homework after school at the Don Bosco Center in Manassas. MARY STACHYRA LOPEZ | CATHOLIC HERALD

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At 25, Daniel Muniz can still rattle off a list of the friends he
made during his middle school years at the Don Bosco Center in the Georgetown
South neighborhood of Manassas. 

“That guy, he became a Marine,” Muniz said, pointing to a photo
on his cell phone on a recent Friday afternoon at the center. “That’s Ramon. Kenya
is somewhere in the back behind me. My brother, he’s all the way in the back.
He graduated from Virginia Tech. They both got full rides.” 

“I still talk to them all of them,” said Muniz, as loud
cheers and laughter rang out from a group of people playing UNO at a table
behind him. 

Muniz, who now works at the Don Bosco Center three afternoons a
week, is one of the thousands of students who have participated in the after-school
program run by the Youth Apostles for at-risk and other youths. The program has
been based for the last 14 years out of the Georgetown South Community Center, but
needs to move to a new location at the end of the school year.

“The office here said that they wanted to take the concept of an
after-school program in a different direction,” said Youth Apostles Father
Ramon Dominguez, director. “Fundamentally it means the kids are going to come
here and do quiet work, or arts and crafts, or learn piano or something like
that … Which is fine. Our vision of the work that we do here is more outreach,
and we’re looking to reach the kids who have no one, or their parents are
working, or they’re out on the street doing stuff. We are a place for them to
come and not get into any trouble.”

Father Dominguez is looking actively for a new location with
specific criteria: an indoor space at least as big as the current center,
adjacent to a field for outdoor activities and within walking distance to a
neighborhood in need of services. The center’s summer programs could be hosted
at an interim space before the start of the school year.

“It could even be a warehouse,” he said. “You could play soccer
inside a warehouse.”

The impact of moving is unknown. Eighty percent of 263 registered
participants and 685 visitors in 2017 were from the Georgetown South
neighborhood. Ninety-six percent were from the City of Manassas. 

“While it is sad that we would probably disconnect from a number
of these kids especially the younger ones who don’t have the
ability to get in a car and drive over or don’t have a parent who can drop them
off hopefully they’ll have something they can connect with,”
Father Dominguez said. “For every door that closes, we’re hoping another will
open.”

Some, such as Kevin Lizama, a seventh-grader at Metz Middle
School in Manassas, hope to continue coming to the center for the soccer and
homework help. 

“I can try to get a ride sometimes,” he said.

Muniz, who lives in Georgetown South, will miss working in his
own neighborhood but hopes to pass on the values he learned at the center
wherever it relocates. 

“I want them to fall in love with God as I did in high school and
when I started volunteering here,” he said.  

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