A Washington, D.C., youth advocate serves as a father figure and friend to youth living in the city's toughest neighborhoods.

June 2007

By Andrea Dearborn and Laura Reinhardt, Advocacy & Communications

On June 17, millions of children in America will express love for their dads with gifts and cards.

Sadly, millions of others might wonder who or where their father is. It’s impossible to replace a missing dad, but some World Vision-supported youth workers come pretty close. Raimon Nelson, a church youth worker, fits that description. He mentors kids living in some of the most violent neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.

'He Straightened Me Up'

For 14-year-old Anieka Robinson, youth worker Raimon Nelson is like a father — the father she never had.

“I started out living with my mom and grandma,” she says. “My father wasn’t there for me. We’d see him once a year. He’d call, but I didn’t want to speak to him because he hurt my feelings.”

Anieka begins to cry as she talks about her father, but she quickly wipes her tears away to talk about Raimon’s role in her life: “Rai showed me that it’s OK to look into the future and not dwell in the past. He straightened me up. If I didn’t have Rai, I’d be doing stupid things that I’d regret later on in life.”

Such a testimony is all the more striking when one realizes that Anieka comes from a community where positive male role models are desperately lacking. Chat to the young people Raimon ministers to every week at the First Baptist Church on Randolph Street, and violence is a recurring theme.

Youth leader Tiffany Savage, 17, says fighting is often localized between one block and a neighboring block or even between different segments of the same street and has continued for decades. “Most of the people in the neighborhood gangs don’t even know why they are fighting,” she says.

Jonathan Wade, 13, says he always prays when he walks out his front door. “It’s dangerous out there,” he says.

Anieka describes leaving a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant with her mom and grandma. Two cars pulled into the parking lot, and people started shooting each other. “We got in our car, but then one of the bullets went through my grandmother’s window. God must have been with us, because it just flew through the car and didn’t hit anyone.”

Raimon says children growing up in such neighborhoods urgently need to have other options presented to them. “Otherwise, the few blocks in this neighborhood is all they know,” he says. “They will not realize what they can aspire to because they have never seen anything else.”

Discovering Alternatives

go-go bands playing a style of funk music that is a huge draw for local youth.

“The city has clubs withregular go-go bands where there is a lot of violence,” she says. “But here at church you would have rival neighborhoods in this area, sitting in here, listening to Rai and respecting him.”

Positive Impacts

It’s exhausting work, but Raimon knows from personal experience that it is vital. He recalls his own childhood and the fact that his father and uncle were both substance abusers. He says the thing that kept him from following their example was his relationship with a deacon from a nearby church who spent time with local young people, played basketball with them, and invited them to his home.

Ask young people like Tiffany, Anieka, and Jonathan to sum up Raimon’s influence on their lives, and it’s clear that Rai is having a similar impact.

Says Tiffany: “Rai is everybody’s big brother, uncle, father, and sometimes mother!”

Says Jonathan: “Rai can accept you as you are. In this program, you can just be yourself.”

Says Anieka: “There’s a hole in my heart because my father is not there. Rai is my father and my motivation.”