Showing posts with label gangs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gangs. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Her guiding principle when working with at-risk teens: Never, ever give up – CSMonitor – 29 Nov 2010
Through project Roca (Spanish for 'rock') Mary Baldwin reaches out to teenagers in Massachusetts to keep them off the streets and out of jail.
The last thing Mary Baldwin would call herself is a hero. In fact, she doesn't like to talk about herself; she'd rather let others do the talking. Not about her – about their own transformed lives.
Yet so many of those people would tell you that they changed their lives directly because of Ms. Baldwin and her unwavering conviction that "as long as you're living, you have a chance."
Baldwin – or simply "Molly," as everyone knows her – became interested as a teenager in community work and especially in prisons. "I found that our penal system is ineffective, expensive – and dangerous," she says. "I thought, there's got to be a better way."
So almost 23 years ago, when the state of Massachusetts gave her a $134,000 grant to start a program to prevent teen pregnancies, she dived in.
Today Baldwin, and "some fabulous teachers and coaches," have parlayed that first grant into an $8 million project called Roca (Spanish for "rock"). Last year, Roca served more than 700 youths through an educational and training intervention program, as well as another 150 young people through less intensive services.
Roca has become a valued part of the community: a training, counseling, and all-around life-transforming center for some of the most at-risk young people in the eastern Massachusetts cities of Chelsea and Revere, and also in East Boston, as well as in Springfield, in western Massachusetts.
They all are places where gang violence and poverty intersect in a seemingly endless cycle.
Roca may have gone "a little against the stream" to achieve its goal of moving young people out of violence and poverty, Baldwin concedes. But no one can argue with its success rate.
Through its "high-risk intervention model," Roca keeps young people in school; helps those who've dropped out gain life skills (including a GED, the equivalent of a high school diploma); aids youths in finding and keeping jobs; and provides a place to stay off the streets – and out of jail.
Roca also focuses on helping teen parents succeed by encouraging them to stay in school, as well as by providing prenatal and postnatal care (while counseling them to avoid more pregnancies).
Maybe most important, Baldwin has given many forgotten or neglected young people hope for the future.
She attributes her success principally to two things: the many people who have helped and supported her, and the youth workers she sends onto the streets every day to encourage gang members and dropouts to come in and accept help.
Roca youth workers visit teens' homes, take them to and from school, tell them their own stories of how they left gangs, or just provide a place to feel safe.
Sotun Krouch, who came to the United States from Cambodia as an infant, and as a teen wound up on the streets, says tenacious Roca workers brought him around.
"They keep coming after you," he says. Today, Mr. Krouch serves as Roca's evaluation and information technology coordinator.
Perhaps Roca's biggest contribution is that it provides a safe environment. The Chelsea facility includes a gym, where teams compete in basketball tournaments. Roca offers training in framing, cabinetmaking, finish carpentry, jewelrymaking, dance, nutrition, and cooking.
A music lab supports bands that form at Roca. Young people can even produce their own CDs there. A kitchen serves free dinners every night to 75 people in the community.
Rosa Bermudez, a 19-year-old mother, works in the Roca kitchen learning about food preparation and nutrition. Ms. Bermudez's kitchen work helps her to meet the criteria for the Youth Star Program, part of Americorps, a federal training and service program.
She attends college in Swampscott, Mass., and hopes to find work in the medical field upon graduation. Roca provides the child care she desperately needs for her 2-year-old son, Isaiah, while she works to complete her program, she says.
Roca has had a deep and positive impact on Chelsea, says City Manager Jay Ash. Baldwin is the most deeply committed person he's ever seen helping youths, who often have no one else who cares about them, he says.
"She's even challenged me to look inward at myself, and outward at what I want for a greater society," Mr. Ash says. "For the last 15 years, we've been partners in contributing to some remarkable achievements for Roca."
Not all stories at Roca end in success – and even the good endings often don't come about quickly, Baldwin says. Despite some failures, the tough work, and the challenges, her guiding principle remains the same: Never, ever give up on anyone.
Thom Ke, who showed up 17 years ago as a teenage gang member, still is amazed at Baldwin's willingness to go the extra mile. Now a father and owner of two family businesses – and a volunteer community organizer himself – Mr. Ke calls Baldwin "an absolute inspiration.
"She changes lives, one kid at a time. She's my hero," he says.
"She's the real deal."
They need mentors like us: ex-gangsters – AsiaOne – 12 Nov 2010
By Veena Bharwani
IT'S outrageous and senseless.
This is how a reformed gangster and drug addict described the recent gang-related attacks at Downtown East and Bukit Panjang.
Pastor Don Wong, 50, said yesterday: "It's really terrible. We spend so much time trying to help youths and we are sad when we read such stories."
The executive director of The New Charis Mission, who counsels youth offenders, said that when he was in a gang in the 1970s, gang members would never go about slashing people for no good reason.
"The gangs today are much worse than the gangs of before," he added.
"Before, we had a code of honour and we had rules. If you had a problem with another gang, you'd arrange to meet to settle the problem.
"Once you tell the rival gang you are sorry, it is over. They won't come after you any more.
"There was no such thing as staring competitions, and whacking and slashing like what's happening today.
"In the old days, if you acted like that, the gang leader would punish you according to the strict code of conduct."
Pastor Wong was 13 when he began taking marijuana and heroin. At 14, he dropped out of school, joined gangs and trafficked in drugs.
When he was 23, his father, who runs a confectionery business, had to bail him out for three days so he could get married.
"Instead, I used the three days to get friends to prepare drugs for me to smuggle into prison," he said.
For 12 years, he was in and out of drug rehabilitation and prison.
A new leaf
He finally turned around in 1993 - after another spell in prison - when a pastor got him to check into The Helping Hand, a Christian halfway house. A sermon at the shelter on his first day changed his life.
"It was then I had my wake-up call," said Pastor Wong, now married to a church worker. They have two primary school-going children. He has a son, 26, from a previous marriage.
He and his team of seven junior counsellors, who are also ex-offenders, work with gang members and youths at risk.
"What they need is a mentor, someone who talks their lingo," he said.
"When we go into the prisons, we tell them about our lives. They can identify with us as we have been through the same thing they have.
"We can't just tell them that what they are doing is bad. They need to have a goal and a plan.
"I tell them if they reform, they can have the chance to help someone else who needs some guidance, which is what I am doing now.
"They need people to believe in them."
Another ex-drug addict and gangster, Mr Glenn Lim, 39, founded Architects of Life (AOL), where former delinquents help young ex-offenders and youth at risk get back on their feet.
He said: "They need someone to care for them even before they turn the corner themselves.
"What they don't need is another intervention programme, or adults treating them as deficits.
"They don't need hardware (or another formal programme). They need 'heartware' - that is a relationship with a trusted mentor like us."
Mr Lim was mentor to David Thorairajan Manickam, the ex-gangster who was featured in The New Paper on Sunday.
Mr Thorairajan, 29, is now about to graduate with a degree in Psychology and Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource at the Singapore Management University.
"I believed in his potential even while he was still in prison struggling with who he was," he said.
Why are youths so violent these days?
Mr Lim said that part of the problem is the lifestyle.
He explained: "Look at the games they play, like World of Warcraft for instance. They just shoot and don't think."
So some end up being violent without thinking about the consequences.
Talking about his own past, he said: "I turned to gangsterism and drugs between the ages of 16 and 23."
Finally, at 23, he was caught at the Woodlands Checkpoint and faced the possibility of life in prison and 24 strokes of the cane for drug trafficking.
But he had someone who believed in him - his father.
"I gave him so many headaches and still, he believed in me and bailed me out and I made a fresh start," he said.
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