Where a gift gives forever

A Life Discovered

Rakeisha will tell you that it’s hard to grow up without a parent. But that’s just what she was doing when, as a first-grader, she started to attend the after school program at Agape House, as Thea Bowman was originally known. With their mother serving a long-term prison sentence, she and her sister were taken in by their baby sitter and her husband.

“I grew up calling them mommy and daddy,” Rakeisha says, “but I didn’t know until I was about 7 years old that they weren’t my biological parents.” She went to the agency every day and enjoyed everything about it, from the teachers who cared, to playing outdoors to field trips to places she would otherwise not have known.

With the endorsement of Thea Bowman’s staff, Rakeisha was awarded a scholarship to Notre Dame Senior High School in Utica. There, she went on to excel both academically and in a plethora of school and community activities. She was named to both Who’s Who Among American High School Students and the National Honor Roll, was accepted for the Congressional Student Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., and earned the rank of platoon commander in NJROTC. She also participated in Junior Frontiers, numerous dance productions and found time to volunteer at Thea Bowman House, local nursing homes and at her church.

Rakeisha graduated from Notre Dame in June 2006, bound for Buffalo State College with her sights set on a master’s degree in biology followed by a career in dermatology. She is a beneficiary of The Community Foundation’s Cunningham Fund for Thea Bowman House Scholarships.

Partners In Helping Kids

Thea Bowman House opened its doors as the “After Three Bunch” for 20 children in October 1986. It became Agape House and was known by that name before changing to Thea Bowman in 1996. Although undergoing continual growth and expansion of services, the agency has remained focused on providing a safe, nurturing environment where children and families, culturally diverse and often economically disadvantaged, can achieve their full potential.

Today, Thea Bowman House operates two sites in Utica — on Lafayette Street and in the DeSales Center on Genesee Street — offering a multitude of programs that address the physical, nutritional, social and emotional needs of young people from preschoolers to teens. The unconditional love with which it reaches out has been one constant throughout the agency’s first 20 years. Another has been the partnership it has enjoyed with The Community Foundation.

Since 1990, the agency has received 23 grants from The Foundation, totaling over $225,000. The earliest funding came in 1990, to help equip the fledgling Agape House. The Foundation also provided early-on assistance by guaranteeing a portion of a loan the agency procured for its start-up operations. Other grants have supported a broad range of physical and programmatic improvements, from a new roof at the Lafayette Street facility, to subsidizing a vital child care program for low-income families.

Not every youngster at Thea Bowman House will have a success story, but all will be given a chance, because as the agency celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2006, Jane Domingue’s 1997 description rings as true as ever.