Day 103: Be a Role Model

January  is National Mentoring Month.  "The time each year when our nation spotlights the importance of mentors and the need for every child to have a caring adult in his or her life.  When you serve as a mentor, you enrich your own life as much as you do the life of a child."

A caring adult.  Someone who will be there and can be counted on.  Dependable.  Providing a positive example in how to approach challenges.  Demonstrating healthy relationships.  We all need someone like this in our life.  And for some children, this isn't their parents for whatever the reason.  But a mentor can provide this social and emotional construct.  Visit National Mentoring Month and MENTOR to find ways to connect with at-risk youth and help guide them in a positive direction.  

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Working at a table crowded with binders and textbooks, Glendale resident Nancy Stein is leading two children through their homework exercises.

"Is that how you spell 'remember?'" she asks. "Sound it out. You are missing some letters."

It is a scene played out each evening in households across the country. But the children, siblings Jenny and Danny Barajas, 9 and 12 years old, respectively, are not Stein's own. And the table is not in the family kitchen, but in the activity room at PATH Achieve, a homeless shelter in south Glendale.

Stein, a volunteer with the nonprofit organization School on Wheels, works to ensure that her students stay on track despite the instability of homeless life. School on Wheels provides a variety of services, including free school supplies, uniforms, school enrollment and parent counseling.

Its primary mission, however, is to foster academic success with one-on-one tutoring. Hundreds of School on Wheels volunteers work at sites across Southern California, including Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

There are more than 35,000 homeless youth enrolled in Los Angeles County schools, according to the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness. Families with young children now account for 40% of the nation's homeless population.

Homeless children face myriad challenges, said Natasha Bayus, School on Wheels regional coordinator for Burbank and Glendale, including limited access to nutritious food and hygiene products. And they are sometimes plagued by social stigma, as well as frequent moves.

"Each time a student moves, they are set back three to four months," Bayus said. "If they move multiple times in a year, they can be behind at least a year of school. They might be working on things like algebra but lacking basic addition and subtraction [skills]."

Parents are typically consumed trying to find steady work and places to live, Bayus said, leaving them little time to go over homework. And in some cases they themselves may be uneducated.

"A lot of the parents might not have graduated high school themselves," Bayus said. "So if the kid is in high school and is working on some advanced problems, it is even harder for those parents to handle those things."

School on Wheels volunteers are seeing more families forced into homelessness due to job loss, eviction and foreclosure, Bayus said. Jenny and Danny's mother, Maria Cardenas, said her family was evicted from their Sun Valley apartment last spring after a dispute with their landlord.

Terrified that her children would be removed from her custody, she tried to hide the family's circumstances, Cardenas said. Each night they parked their car at Sun Valley Park. For four months, the children slept in the vehicle, while their mother slept next to it on the curb. They used the park's pool facilities to bathe.

Eventually, Cardenas was approached by a Los Angeles police officer, who encouraged her to go to a shelter. She is determined to keep her family together, Cardenas said, and with the help of the School on Wheels tutors, her children remain on track at school.

"They are excellent with them, especially [my son]," Cardenas said.

Roberta Lara, a paralegal at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank and a School on Wheels volunteer, said she communicates directly with a client's teacher in order to identify weaknesses, such as reading. Her most recent student made noticeable progress, she said.

"I try to talk to them and make them feel as comfortable as possible," Lara said. "They really open up to me, and I enjoy that."

Watching children not only survive homelessness, but actually thrive, is incredible, Stein said. She has had tutoring relationships that lasted for several years, and others that lasted just a few weeks.

"You don't really know how much effect you had on them," Stein said. "You just hope and pray that somehow you helped them."  Glendale News-Press By Megan O'Neil

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Day 102: The Recreation Project

Africa is still on my mind.  A place where there is so much pain and suffering, through disease, poverty, and war.  But a place where good is happening as well.  Every day.  Africa is on the minds of many, working to bring clean water, jobs, and healing to war-torn regions.

The Recreation Project is working to transform the lives of youth who grew up in a time of war.  Exposed to, and participants in,  the tragedy that is war, their childhoods were snatched away.  Innocence lost.  But how does one go back to "normal" life when the war is done?  What is normal life, if all you've ever known is violence?

"At least 66,000 children and youth have been abducted in northern Uganda and thousands more have been raised on hostility and self-preservation rather than love and interdependence. The 20 years of brutality they witnessed, and were forced to take part in, fostered a culture of violence, and a psyche of despair and mistrust. While an agreement that would formally end the war has not yet been reached, the region has experienced relative peace and the work of long-term, holistic recovery is beginning.  Amidst a deteriorated social fabric, children lack the parental and institutional support needed to cope during this period of transition and increasingly adopt damaging behaviors such as joining gangs, abusing substances, and engaging in risky sexual behavior.

Our Response

Based on the belief that each of us has the ability to heal from within, The Recreation Project will create the space for young people to ignite their natural resilience. In an environment of pervasive mistrust and negative self-concept, The Recreation Project provides an alternative experience of cooperative and confidence building activities through a guided low ropes course and outdoor adventure excursions for nearly 3,000 youth.

Exhilarating experiences carry associations of war and fear. High impact experiential learning provides an opportunity to engage in stimulating activities in a safe and controlled environment, challenging bodies and minds to make new associations with those experiences. The rigorous activities of the project also provide a healthy release of energy that may otherwise be spent on damaging behaviors.

Through experiential learning techniques, The Recreation Project presents psychological, spiritual and behavioral change concepts in a way that is easily understood and internalized as compared to traditional classroom lectures or training sessions.

Building on the expertise of the Discovery Centre for building and training (based in southern Uganda), and partnering with the ongoing trauma-counseling program of the Caritas Counseling Center, The Recreation Project is an innovative project of the The Little Sisters of Mary Immaculate of Gulu that will bring healing and inspire young people to think in a transformational way about themselves and the future of northern Uganda."

The Recreation Project's Goals are divided into Phase One and Two.  Here is how they hope to accomplish their goals to provide hope and healing to the youth in Uganda.

Phase One: Challenge Course - Groups of 12-17 year olds and 18-25 year olds will participate in a one-day Challenge Course.  The Challenge Course and team-building activities will build onto and help integrate lessons taught in the group learning modules.  Topics presented may include emotional/psychological constructs such as: self-concept and identity, fear, shame, and mistrust.  The project also teaches creative problem solving and conflict mediation skills and provides information on gender-based violence, and substance abuse.  Additionally, each group will create an action plan for community service.  Groups are selected in collaboration with the Gulu District Education Officer and with child-protection agencies.

Phase Two: Outdoor Adventure Excursion - In addition to the Challenge Course activities, overnight outdoor adventure excursions will be offered to select youth leaders.  The excursions will foster group cohesion, teach concepts of leadership, as well as build personal confidence through challenging group tasks and symbolic activities that lead youth into adulthood.  Youth will challenge pre-conceptions of their own limitations through reflection (guided by a staff member) and affirmation of others in the group.

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Day 101: Planning Your Family

Africa is on my mind.  John has shared with me so many stories and beautiful pictures from his trip there, that I can't stop thinking of the people even though I have never met them.  They are a gorgeous people, and the children are impishly cute.  John said there were kids everywhere.  Some villages seemed to be filled with mobs of children, and hardly any adults could be found.  Perhaps this is because on average there are 8 children per adult.

It's a complex problem.  A large unemployment rate leaves a lot of spare time with not much to do.  The mortality rate is high, so having more children will ensure that at least some will live.  Culturally it's not uncommon to have a large family.  And education on contraception and family planning is only recently becoming available.

Day 100: Leaving Home

Leaving America can often be hugely eye-opening.  We've grown up here, and the access we have to water, food, education, and homes, seems so ordinary.  We don't think twice about where we will get food to fill our stomachs.  And the simple twist of the faucet unleashes gallons and gallons of cold clean water.  But to go away from this country, and enter another that is not as well off as our own, we then see how most of the world lives.  Unreliable electricity.  Unclean water that must be retrieved.  Many people without jobs, living in need.

The trip becomes a clarifying lens.  We suddenly are able to see clearly the blessings that we have.  Gifts.  Skills.  Resources.  Money.  When we learn and begin to understand the needs in these other places, we also can see how we are called to help.

John just returned from Africa, where he experienced this firsthand.  We've been processing his trip, and there are exciting prospects on the horizon.  Ways that we may be able to bridge our lives with theirs.  We hope to make a difference.  I'm excited to perhaps share this dream with you in the next 260 days.  

HALO, Helping Art Liberate Orphans, is an organization founded by Rebecca Neuenswander Welsh.  Another dream that was born from a trip outside of the USA, and is now flourishing. 

"In 2002, Rebecca went on a mission trip to Honduras. It was there her life took an unexpected turn.

"I encountered a girl named Daisy, she was living on the streets, she's six years old, she was begging on the streets for water," Rebecca said. "And I'm thinking how do I live a six-hour flight from here my whole life and I have no idea this is going on?"

Back home, Rebecca shared Daisy's story with kids in America. They were so moved they started fundraising - $5,000 went to orphans in Mexico. Soon, Rebecca began to receive artwork from them as a thank you.

"We had all this artwork and we decided to do an art auction," she said. "It just went over so well, because you sell a piece with a child's story and it's so powerful for people to be able to connect to that.

In 2005, Rebecca formed the charity - helping art liberate orphans - or HALO. 

"We would do art therapy with the kids and it just helped them communicate better and raise their self esteem," Rebecca said. The organization currently supports 11 orphanages around the world.

HALO also serves more than 1,000 underprivileged kids at educational centers in Kansas City and Denver. Last year, Rebecca's charity raised more than $300,000 to support the kids.

"It's about reaching out and really wanting to make a difference," she said. "Everybody wants to do something they just have to figure out how to do it."

Rebecca found that by using her own strength she was able to help build a strong life for others." CBS News


Helping Art Liberate Orphans from Ambitious Pixels on Vimeo.

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Day 99: Take Action

In his annual State of the Union address, President Obama addressed a nation struggling out of a crippling economic recession, facing divisive policy decisions -- and still reeling from the recent shooting rampage in Tucson.

Banding together in tough times, Americans across the country are bringing the president's words to life by taking local action to improve their communities.

1. Feed Local Families - The country's precarious economic situation remains the most pressing issue facing the country. Unemployment rates are high, home foreclosures are frequent and resources at food banks are stretched thin.  Take action to support local families that need help putting food on the table by volunteering to work at your local food bank -- or donate extra food to those in need. You can locate your nearest food bank on the Feeding America website. Read tips on how you can best help.
2. Help Provide Healthcare - Health care remains one of the primary issues on the national agenda.  Dr. Roseanna Means saw the struggles of homeless women in Boston who couldn't access health care and knew she must take action to help.  Now, Means runs an organization she started called Women of Means which helps local homeless women get access to health care. Boston residents can support Women of Means by volunteering.  Wherever you live, you can follow Dr. Means' footsteps by making a difference for those in need of health care near you. If you don't have the medical expertise to start your own organization, find a free clinic near you and see if they are in need of volunteers or donations. You can also support the national cause by contributing to the National Association of Free Clinics.
3. Mentor At-Risk Youth - Improving the American education system also featured prominently in the President's speech. While education policy will have to be decided in the halls of Congress, everyday Americans are pitching in to boost younger generations by volunteering to mentor young people.  In honor of January being National Volunteering Month, HuffPost blogger Tabby Biddle took a look at some of the organizations connecting caring adults with at-risk youth.  National nonprofit Step Up Women's Network connects female professionals with teens in need of role models and mentors.  For volunteers of either gender, Big Brothers Big Sisters is an organization that helps improve the lives of young Americans across the country. You can find more information about becoming a mentor on the organization's website.
4. Support the Troops - As she watched the State of the Union address, Michelle Obama sat alongside members of the armed forces.  This annual tradition reminds Americans of the importance of supporting the military men and women and their families.  You can show your support for the troops by volunteering with the USO. By welcoming soldiers home or mailing them care packages while they serve abroad, you will help improve the daily lives of servicemen and women.

Article found at HuffingtonPost

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