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Fighting youth violence with education

Wednesday, January 31 at 12:01 PM

By Tim Welker

The shooting death of Denver Broncos player Darrent Williams on New Year’s Day and the 2005 shooting deaths of Javad Marshall-Fields and Vivian Wolfe, witnesses to a gang-related crime, leave us wondering if we’re experiencing another wave of gang violence.

What we do know is that these tragic cases and others are shaking our communities to their cores, and I know that a lack of education is at the core of this issue. In fact, there is a direct correlation between dropouts and gang members. We cannot sit back and let the problem spiral out of control.

We must act now to ensure that young people have hope for their futures through education, youth mentoring and employment opportunities.

At Goodwill, our programs help at-risk youth connect the relevance of their education to their futures. But we can’t accomplish this work alone. We need and accept financial support, of course. But we also value our hundreds of volunteers, who are willing to do what it takes to ensure each and every student can look forward to a bright future.

Goodwill seeks to ensure that young people have the education and post-secondary options that will help them stay in school, graduate and prepare for the work force. We help provide options to the street, to drugs, and a life of violence. At Goodwill, we help people help themselves. And to do that we need the help of the community.

Many volunteers devote hundreds of hours to teaching young people a better way. At Goodwill, we have a multitude of programs that are addressing problems we know can become a barrier to young people reaching their full potential. The following are initiatives of our youth services program:

School To Work, based in 27 public schools in Denver, Jefferson, Adams, Arapahoe and Weld counties, is a nationally recognized program that places us with the most at-risk students. The program’s curriculum complements the schools’ academic objectives. Local business leaders support the program by sharing their expertise with classes. Our staff and volunteers also provide one-on-one mentoring of students.

Earn ’N Learn is a program offering students, ages 16-19, employment through paid internships. We match the career interests of students with employers in those occupational areas.

CareersPlus Mentoring is a group mentoring program that matches students with community volunteers dedicated to helping students with self-awareness, cultural competence and values, teambuilding, goal-setting, time management, academic achievement, career exploration, money management and post-secondary education preparation.

LISTO (Latinos Involved in Sharing Tomorrow’s Opportunities) also means “ready” in Spanish. The program reaches out to Latino professionals and encourages them to work with students in schools with more than 50 percent Hispanic student populations. LISTO volunteers contribute more than 500 hours of volunteer time a year.

Youth Mentoring Collaborative. Within this program is one of Goodwill’s newest programs, which connects volunteer mentors with homeless teens. The outcomes of these initiatives are measured in terms of improved graduation rates and acquisition of critical life skills. Seniors participating in our program have a 93 percent graduation rate. We interact with more than 13,000 young people each year to keep them in school, help them graduate, pursue post-secondary options and prepare for the workplace of tomorrow.

We welcome any help from the community to keep these programs going and to increase the number of young people we assist. For more information about partnering with Goodwill as an employer, please contact Mary Hendrix at mhendrix@goodwilldenver.org or call 303-650-7734. To volunteer in the schools, please call Mary Lane at 303-650-7733, or e-mail at mlane@goodwilldenver.org.

The time and money it takes to continue and expand these initiatives to reach more at-risk youth in additional schools is a small price to pay to help our young people become educated, contributing members of society instead of resorting to lives of crime.

Tim Welker has been president and CEO of Goodwill Industries of Denver for 28 years.

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