LEWISTON – A first-year summer program for inner-city kids has been able to raise enough support and money to become an after-school center this fall.

The Tree Street Youth will open Sept. 6 and offer homework help and after-school activities at its Howe Street building across from Longley Elementary School, director Julia Sleeper said.

The summer program “was phenomenal,” Sleeper said. “There were a lot of ups and downs, but it turned out better than we expected.”

With concerns from many that there’s a need for after-school tutoring and activities, Sleeper said she’s received enough private and in-kind donations, including student interns from Bates College, to open for several months.

She’s hopeful her program will get grants allowing it to operate throughout the school year. Meanwhile, community groups are mulling ways to help. For example, L/A Arts is considering providing some art teaching, Executive Director Odelle Bowman said.

Tree Street’s summer program, which closed Aug. 12, served some 100 kids every day, Bowman said. If the program doesn’t reopen, “they’ll have no place to go. The library’s concerned. They can’t take 100 kids in after school. We have a need for more after-school programs.”

Sleeper, 25, is a Brewer native who graduated from Bates College in 2008 and stayed in Lewiston to help disadvantaged children. She was involved in after-school homework help at Trinity’s Jubilee Center, but the demand outpaced available space.

When it opens Sept. 6, the program will offer separate homework rooms for elementary, middle and high school students, plus “hang-out rooms” where students can play air hockey and other games or participate in art, karate or dance.

The center is open to students from Lewiston-Auburn, but the primary focus is students in the downtown “tree streets” area: Birch, Pine, Walnut.

It will be free. “Cash is hard for a lot of these families to come by,” Sleeper said. “We do ask families if they can volunteer, help us clean or help with certain events, or donate items like paper towels or toilet paper.”

Sleeper expects up to 150 students a day this fall. The program will have six to 10 Bates interns who will monitor or lead tutoring and activities, and nine “street leaders,” high school students who act as counselors.

The street leaders are Lewiston High School juniors and seniors who live in the neighborhood and are considered role models. They come from diverse backgrounds, some are white, some are Somalian, one is Spanish. They’re a big part of the program, Sleeper said.

“By the end of the summer young children talked about becoming street leaders. They said ‘I want to be like Fatuma or Chris or Matt.’ If they continue to see those people around the neighborhood making good choices and going to college, it gives them a model to follow.”

Lewiston School Superintendent Bill Webster said after-school programs like Tree Street are “most definitely” needed.

Students who are not at grade level, which include many inner city kids, “increasingly should and must participate in these types of programs if they’re going to be successful,” Webster said. Those students need preschool, a longer school day, and learning in the summer.

“Programs like this extend the school year by providing additional resources and time for learning and enrichment, and all that goes with it,” he said. Compared to the cost of adding more school days, “it’s a less expensive way to add length to the school calendar.”

For more information go to: http://tree-street-youth.org/  or call (207) 577-6386.

Donations of $200 are being sought to sponsor a child for a year. Director Julia Sleeper said her program needs folding tables and folding chairs for children to use for doing homework.