Progress at The Oaks is homegrown

Four new picnic tables at The Oaks apartments won't appear on any list of Hilton Head Island's top amenities.

Maybe they should.

They actually represent something more important to life than amenities. The Oaks, where most residents today are Hispanic, is part of a "tri-community" area where three neighboring apartment complexes are too often linked to crime, unemployment, illiteracy, violence and youth problems.

The picnic tables were built by people in the neighborhood, for people in the neighborhood. And the picnic tables are part of a new playground, which 30 to 40 people in the neighborhood helped construct.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony is from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday. Everyone is invited to the festival-like affair.

Also worth celebrating at The Oaks is a new soccer field that replaced a more traditional island amenity -- tennis courts.

And so is Apartment No. 29. It's been turned into a resource center. Residents can go there for help with health care, such as free checks for high blood pressure or prostate cancer. They can also find help with employment, vocational training, personal finance or technology.

Hilton Head Island High School principal Amanda O'Nan and two of her teachers were at Apartment 29 on Thursday afternoon for a weekly tutoring session. The school takes after-school help in math and English to The Oaks because The Oaks can't or won't come to the school, O'Nan said. Parents might be intimidated by the school, and the students may have to care for younger siblings after school, she said.

When the school mapped out where students live who showed a need for extra help, the Oaks was one of the places. So the school goes there.

"The tough part is to go there," said Naren Sharma, chairman of the board of the nonprofit Neighborhood Outreach Connection organization. For about a year, it has been coordinating churches and other agencies to reach into Beaufort County neighborhoods that need help. That includes the work at The Oaks.

Sharma says results take patience. People who help others must be flexible, not dictatorial. Help cannot be a handout. It must come with the expectation of financial or in-kind support from the beneficiaries.

At The Oaks, residents suggested the soccer field, and raised half the field's cost. Residents said the playground would be nice for mothers and children, and they built them.

That's why the new picnic tables are such an important amenity. They represent a willingness by outsiders to go where they might be uncomfortable -- and to listen.