Nonprofit expects $3M, gets $8.5M

Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren has pledged $8.5 million to THINK Together, an after-school program that launched in the 1990s as an effort to combat gang violence in Westside Costa Mesa.

The funds, which Bren will parcel out during the next five years, are targeted at expanding after-school programs in Santa Ana and East Los Angeles. The study center on Shalimar Drive in Costa Mesa is not expected to receive any of the money individually, but Randy Barth, the former Costa Mesa businessman who launched the program in 1997, said he couldn’t be happier about the donation.

“It was born at Shalimar in Costa Mesa, so this is kind of an evolution from there,” said Barth, the chief executive of THINK Together.

Bren was not available for comment, but he issued a news release saying he was motivated to support after-school programs after hearing about dropping enrollment and budget cuts in the Santa Ana and Los Angeles areas. THINK Together serves about 20,000 children in Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“THINK Together is a proven program that delivers results for these young children at a critical time in their educational lives through the collaboration of teachers, school officials and volunteer mentors,” Bren stated in the news release.

Sat Tamaribuchi, the Irvine Co.’s vice president of environmental affairs, said Bren had supported the program since 1998 and made a $1-million contribution to it last year.

“He has a passion for education and really believes in the after-school program as a way to reach these children and invest in their future,” he said.

The goals of the $8.5-million pledge include expanding THINK Together to every kindergarten-through-fifth-grade campus in the Santa Ana School District and bringing the program’s enrollment to 30,000 students. That’s a larger number than Barth had in mind in 1994, when he founded the Shalimar Learning Center.

“Kids were being bused back into the neighborhood, and there was nothing for them to do,” he said. “All the things for kids to do after school were in different gang territories.”

The day the Shalimar Learning Center opened in a small apartment building, Barth said, more than 100 youths showed up. Within weeks, community reaction was so strong that the center expanded to three apartments that have served as its home ever since. In 1997, Barth started the nonprofit THINK Together to spread the after-school program around Southern California.

In recent weeks, Barth said, officials for the nonprofit had been in talks with Bren about a donation, but they hadn’t been prepared for the final amount.

“We were originally talking about $3 million, so $8.5 million was quite a jump,” he said.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].