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Communities caring for young people in Seattle and Tacoma
She met Lara at an alternative high school in Tacoma. St. John Baptist Church Youth Outreach Worker Joy Eckwood was drawn to the girl who rarely spoke and had the dull look of someone who had given up on herself.“I asked her if I could talk to her and she said, ‘Yeah, sure, why not,’” in a tone so filled with ambivalence it just reeked of challenge to the Vision Youth outreach worker. The girl warned Joy that she wasn’t one to talk about herself. Yet with Joy, she opened up. Once she started, she talked the way one might drink after a lifetime of thirst. For Lara, the talks represented a lifetime of neglect and having no one to listen.
Lara’s drug-addicted-dad no longer was in her life. She was living with his
ex-wife. But the only adult in her life who made any effort to care for Lara was running a methamphetamine lab out of the home, and providing easy access to the highly addictive drug that had the 15-year-old in its grip.
Joy not only listened to Lara, she found a new home for her with caring family members in a nearby town, and sought help for her drug problem. Lara has kicked her addiction. She's going to school and church. She feels good about herself and it shows.
“When she was in the office the other day, someone asked, ‘Was that the same girl?’ She just glows now," Joy says, adding, "We’re talking these days about going to college.”
A Vision for Seattle and Tacoma’s Youth
Joy is part of Lara’s life because World Vision partners with the Northwest Leadership Foundation, the Coalition for Community Development and Renewal, and local churches to place trained, local adults in struggling Tacoma and Seattle neighborhoods to work with high-risk teens. Youth Outreach Workers (YOWs) are hired by local churches or community organizations with financial support from World Vision. YOWs are committed, Christian adults from the community who have walked the same walk as the youth they serve. The YOWs and their churches also are responsible for mobilizing volunteers in churches and communities for outreach and mentoring activities. In some cases, they work closely with Education Specialists to help young people get the academic help they need to succeed.
World Vision provides the training for YOWs, Education Specialists, and volunteer tutors and mentors, and for the first few years, assists with financial support for salaries as well as with program expenses. In the meantime, World Vision work with churches to help them learn to sustain these ministries on their own.
Education and Mentoring––the Firm Foundation
Vision Youth comes alongside children when they are young and walks with them as they grow into adulthood. World Vision stands beside struggling elementary school students, matching them with trained, adult and older youth mentors in partner churches through the KidREACH program. Their mentors provide help with schoolwork as well as emotional nourishment. In Seattle and Tacoma last year, 680 volunteer tutors built relationships with 590 young students. As young people grow into their middle school and high school years, YOWs take their ministry to the schools, juvenile detention halls, and the streets––wherever high-risk youth are found. As mentors, they provide strong role models and the influence of a caring adult. Their aim is to help youth make good decisions and set positive goals for their lives. YOWs are trained to help young people find the resources they need to follow through on those goals, whether it’s providing Christian discipleship or a referral to an academic specialist, drug-treatment program, counseling, or job training.
In Seattle last year, 22 YOWs worked in 22 churches and community centers, touching the lives of nearly 3,900 young people. In Tacoma, 14 YOWs and three Education Specialists began building relationships with more than 3,700 teens and young adults through local churches and learning centers.
Not all of the kids Joy meets will have the same success as Lara. The halls of inner-city schools are filled with teens who will fall through the cracks or find the lure of the streets too strong. Knowing she can’t reach every child is a frustration, but on the bulletin board above Joy’s desk is a reminder of why she comes to work every day. It’s a card from Lara that reads:
“Thank you for helping me believe in myself all those times I thought I’ve failed. You are a true friend and a fabulous person.”
Your prayer and financial support is needed to help continue programs like Vision Youth and to expand it to reach more high-risk young people.
How You Can Help
Volunteers and YOWs provide young people with stability, which often is lacking in their lives, and the most important gift of all––hope. Here’s what your support can do:
- $30,000 provides one year of funding for a full-time Youth Outreach Worker who can have a positive effect on the lives of approximately 100 children.
- $5,000 funds outreach activities––such as mentoring and program development––for 100 high-risk young people.
- $3,000 can pay for a training session for a YOW or Education Specialist.
Thank you for considering a partnership with Vision Youth. Your compassion can help Vision Youth help high-risk young people to reach their God-given potential.
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