The Path of Intentionality

Violence is on the rise across the Bay Area. In Oakland, there have been more than 100 homicides so far this year. San Francisco has seen more than 75 homicides. And conflicting reports put the number of homicides in Richmond between 18 and 20. These rates don’t even cover other violent crimes including assaults, non-fatal shootings, robberies, etc.

If we as youth workers (those that work with or on behalf of youth) want to address this issue head on, we need to be connected. All of us have specific jobs with specific obligations, hours of operation, geographic focuses, and so on. The youth and families we serve often are hindered by our disjointed and disorganized means of operation.

Take for example an after school program in the Excelsior neighborhood of San Francisco from Spring 2007. The after school program started at 3:30pm and operated until 6pm Monday through Thursday and held special events every Friday. The school had only about 240 students. The after school program served 40 students on average. That left about 200 students without programming. Where were all the youth?

The school I am talking about is Excelsior Middle School (EMS). I was Director of School-Community Relations at Excelsior last spring. I knew from the outset that our after school program would not and could not serve all youth. So I started bridging connections to other service providers throughout San Francisco. And I started finding some of EMS’s youth. They were attending programs at the Marsh, the Greater Mission Consortium, the OMI/Excelsior Beacon Center, Huckleberry House, Excelsior Boys and Girls Club, and more.

I was excited to see youth from EMS engaged in so many different programs. I didn’t view these other agencies and programs as competitors. Rather, they were able to meet the needs of EMS youth better than our program, and for that I was/am grateful.

When it comes to violence and emergencies, knowing exactly who to contact saves vital minutes – minutes our youth and families may not have. I remember receiving a phone call one evening from a guardian of a youth who ran away from home. I had not dealt with a runaway teen in over a year and a half, so I was somewhat at a loss for exactly how to help.

Enter Will Corpuz. I had worked with Will when I was at the OMI/Excelsior Beacon Center, and I remembered that he was now a part of the Community Response Network. Luckily, I had Will’s cell phone number on me. I told the guardian to be patient for a moment while I placed a phone call. I talked to Will, got some great suggestions for the guardians, and called them immediately back. We found the teen that night, and most importantly she was safe.

We as youth workers must seek out opportunities to connect on many different levels. We need to know each other as people, as professionals, and as change agents. We have the capacity to connect our youth, families, and communities and promote human rights. It is our duty to “be the change we wish to see”.

The Youth Development Peer Network is setting off on a year of intentional connections. Our Steering Committee members seek to become hubs, youth workers highly connected to the diverse aspects of our large Bay Area community that can intentionally connect you to other workers. Our goals in doing this are:

• To increase the intention of why we are doing youth work;
• To build an interdependent system of prepared, committed, stable, and valued workers;
• To maximize the impact of our work with youth, families, and communities
  

To accomplish this aim, we need you…the youth workers!

We launched our first Brown Bag on Friday, October 12^th from 12noon to 2:00pm. It was a huge success! We had fifteen youth workers in attendance. Workers talked about barriers to getting teens reading and into libraries and hopes they had for getting more teens reading. I shared a statistic that I learned from Streetside Stories: Arizona uses the illiteracy rate of 4^th graders to determine how many prisons to build. (Update: California has now adopted the same policy.) This spurred all in attendance to make personal commitments to getting teens literate. Some of the commitments include:

* Getting staff engaged in conversations about reading and its importance;

* Becoming a living example by reading;

* Seeing to have collaboration with the libraries on financial literacy;

* Bringing youth from an organization’s youth advisory board to the Library Commission meetings to give feedback about how libraries can become more youth friendly.

We need to do everything in our power to ensure that our youth have the skills necessary to succeed in life. Literacy and reading is one of those skills.

Kudos to Jennifer Collins, Teen Services Manager for San Francisco Libraries for helping get this off the ground.

We will also be co-sponsoring a Brown Bag in early November to prepare youth workers for CNYD’s Investing in Youth Workers Convening on Friday, November 16^th. We are a workforce of over 132,000 strong in the state of California. That is amazing. And it poses amazing opportunities and challenges for how we professionalize our field. The YDPN is dedicated to promoting your voice as a worker at tables with decision-makers. In order for us to accurately represent you, we need your help in crafting a worker-centered agenda. Our Brown Bag in November will start this process. We will follow it up at CNYD’s Convening. And then we will host another Brown Bag in December to craft a more detailed agenda. If you would like to support this effort, please email me, Jason Wyman, at jason@ywcollecti.org.

I am proud to be Co-Manager for the YDPN, and I am excited about all the possibilities that exist for us as workers. I am also very concerned about the alarming homicide rates throughout the Bay Area. I know I am not an expert on solving the problem of violence. I am someone who can point in the direction of others who can help. I am a servant of youth workers. I exist to connect.

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