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| Vision Youth |
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Vision Youth brings together caring, trained adults to walk alongside young people, helping them with succeed in academics, build life skills, and make sound choices. |
Communities Giving Hope to Young People |
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Tyronisha lives in a studio hotel room with her pregnant mother, three siblings, and two, sometimes three kids from other troubled families living in the same hotel. It’s a room that would feel cramped with four people and most days it holds eight. Her mom struggles with mental instability, and doesn’t handle family responsibilities well. At 12, Tyronisha often finds herself in charge and struggling to keep order in the fractured household.
Tyronisha can’t find the quiet or the space she needs to get her homework done, so she’s behind in school, especially in reading. But she’s motivated to attend school because she doesn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps by leaving home at 14 for a life on the streets and prostitution. She’s trying to avoid drugs and other dangerous behaviors, but her 15-year-old sister is dating a 30-something drug dealer, and the hotel where they live is a hub of the local drug trade.
Yet in the midst of this whirlpool of dysfunction and danger, Tyronisha has found a safe harbor: World Vision’s Vision Youth initiative. Ben Eash is one of six Vision Youth outreach workers in Los Angeles. He was hired by a local organization that offers an after-school program for young people as well as mentoring and a safe, caring haven for those who need a stable, compassionate adult in their lives. He has helped assess Tyronisha’s scholastic needs and has arranged for her to enroll in a reading program. He has helped her set goals for the future and is guiding her as she plots a course to reach those goals. He’s watching her faith and her academic abilities grow with each week.
Making a Commitment, Making a Difference
Tyronisha has an able assistant in her quest for success as a young woman. World Vision has been working with Los Angeles churches, faith-based organizations, and community partners for more than 20 years to attack the root causes of poverty. Experience has shown that to break the cycle of poverty, our focus must be on children, and the Vision Youth initiative does just that. We help churches support families through programs that meet basic needs through the distribution of new, donated items—from clothes to personal care items and school supplies. Meanwhile, a leadership-training component helps our ministry and community partners develop the skills they need to organize ministry programs and create the networks that will sustain them.
Vision Youth churches have the drive and the desire to serve children and youth. Now they have valuable resources that can make a difference in the lives of children and families.
That help is desperately needed, says Pastor Greg Turk of All Peoples Christian Church. In just one recent month, five young men died violently within a three-block radius of All Peoples. In a 10-block area around the church, 14 gangs battle for dominance. These boys and young men all display the suicidal tendencies of a community in despair—acted out in homicidal ways, he explains. “We don’t have drive-bys (shootings). We have walk-ups.”
Prospects for girls aren’t much better. A growing percentage of the neighborhood represents first-generation Hispanic families. Without English skills or an education, these immigrants can do little more than work at fast-food restaurants or illegal sweatshops, where they might make a nickel for each garment they produce. Teen pregnancy, domestic violence, and a never-ending cycle of poverty will await many if no interventions are offered.
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