Empowering Youth, Building Men

Allow me to tell you the story of Andres (Name changed for privacy):

Andres was a rambunctious young man of 11 years old who I met while serving as the Executive Director of a youth empowerment organization in Miami. Full of energy, passion and mischief. Shortly after we met, he was kicked out of his after school program for fighting with other participants. We decided to accept him into our after school teen empowerment program and invest heavily into channeling his high energy into productive means. Through a mix of individual therapy, group sessions and individual mentorship, within three months we made him the leader of his group of teens. One day we were on a field trip and I turned around to see Andres standing on a table giving instructions to all 30 participants!

This is the essence of the mission of the Junior Leadership Academy. I’ve heard a saying “if young masculine energy is not channeled it can create gangs, wars and destruction. However if it is channeled effectively, it can be used to build families, communities, companies, cities and countries.”

What I experienced in my 5 years working with 100’s of youth in Miami, is what I titled “the lost teen boys” drifting through life. There exist a lot of programs for kids up to age 10/11 (6th grade). But many programs drop off at that age, the critical turning point for most teens between primary and secondary school. From child to young adult. Age 11 is very young to be unsupervised and in the street. We were able to provide a holistics approach to these “drifters” through a weekly meeting with all department heads (academics, program and therapy team) and provide a unique individualized approach to each case.

Many of them have been parentified and/or served as the pseudo father of a fatherless household, but were very ill equipped in teenage years to take on this role. On the one hand emotionally stunted, but also thrust into a “man of the house” role. In Andres’s case, he harbored a lot of guilt from having to call the police at 7 years old in a domestic violence situation and his father got deported as a result of this call.

As I had ongoing sit down mentorship sessions, Andres’s defiant-challenging the boundaries attitude softened as he felt loved, safe and protected. One day he asked me for advice on a situation he was facing. His mom had told him they were going to take a three day trip, but that would cause him to miss a midterm exam. As I explored further, I could see that the bond of communication between Andres and mom had broken down, through years of trauma and disruption. We were able to facilitate a series of sit down meetings with myself, a therapist, mom and Andres to re establish this trust and communication channel.

Nearly 70% of our participants had PTSD levels of trauma when we begin to measure, through our holistic interventions we were able to see an average of a 50% reduction in presenting symptoms across our teens. In my experience the “worst” of kids have the most potential for blossoming and are incredibly responsive to holistically investing energy and resources. The exciting thing about starting this age is resolving trauma at this lifepoint provides a huge opportunity to break generational cycles and prevent compounding trauma.

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“It is easier to build strong boys, than repair broken men.”

Frederick Douglas

Warmly,

Scott Impola

Founder, Junior Leadership Academy