VENTING

This morning I am filled with a mixture of emotions. As an urban youth worker I think you’ll experience mornings like these often. I write to vent and create community around moments like these. 

To be very transparent, I am attempting to remain balanced, not allowing my perspective to be skewed or jaded. I am fighting the urge to scream out “INJUSTICE” in homes, schools, courts, communities, essentially everywhere I go. 

I am feeling helpless when it comes to raising awareness. Awareness around the simple things in teens’ lives. For example, today youth in the city wake in poverty, not having more than a pair of clothes to mix and match to ensure they don’t “wear the same thing.”  Students wake this morning recovering from bodily injury, after enduring a physical beating, being jumped into their gang. While we sleep cozy in our beds at night, there are thousands of homeless youth awake, having to move place to place to ensure their own safety in the dark hours of night. While we are planning our summer vacations, excited about creating memories with our children and family, youth are contemplating suicide because of isolation, loneliness, and abandonment. While we are tucking our babies in at bedtime, beautiful innocent teens are lips to pipe and mouth to bottle flushing away fantasies of bedtime stories that will never come.  While we are worried about our morning coffee, students are worried about their next trick, as they have been forced into sex trafficking, pleasuring grown strangers for someone else’s gain.

It’s so difficult to help people understand how they can impact a young life. In our society and culture, we are consumed with ourselves. We have forgotten about the children around us who have nothing.  We are consumed with our own comfort and safety, but have forgotten about those who are defenseless, at no fault of their own. As a director of Just Us 4 Youth, a non-profit that serves over 2,000 youth, I am constantly fundraising. My priority and heart are not necessarily to raise funds, but it is to raise people! To help individuals understand that beyond generous donations, our youth need them. Their time and consideration. Their wisdom and advice. Their accompaniment. 

Fatherlessness (motherlessness) is at its highest peak in the youth culture today. This statistic has emerged above all others that have plagued urban communities over the years. In our city, out of the 2,000+ youth that we mentor, the stat has now reached a staggering 83%. This concerns me, and our organizations’ focus in the next 5 years will be to address this epidemic. We will work to empower surrogates to stand in the gap for absentee fathers and mothers in our cities. We will hold events that intentionally address this wound in youth. We will have ongoing restorative circles to work through the layers of dysfunction that come as a result of fatherlessness. Would you consider joining us? We need you! We need mentors!

Giving of yourself is difficult. To fight against the culture and comfort and swim upstream against the current presents many challenges. In spite of this, I implore you to fight the good fight.  Assess your life and be honest about where you can make a difference. All people have something to offer. All people have resources and wealth. Making a transference of this wealth into young lives is what today’s teens need. A trade or skill, time and attention, experiences and opportunity, generous gifts and fiscal support, all of these can make a difference. One hour once a month can facilitate real change. We need you! Join us. We believe in you!

Eric Vasquez

Founder/Director of Just Us 4 Youth