Posted on 11/06/2017 6:41:21 AM PST by proxy_user
Jonathan’s father always told him he would never amount to anything other than a drug dealer. He entered the foster care system when he was 12. At 18, he was in college, but had to drop out to take care of his ill grandmother.
“I always told myself I would graduate college and wouldn’t be a statistic in the foster care system,” said Jonathan, 26, who gave only his first name to protect his privacy. But at 21, he was homeless and jobless. “One day I Googled ‘help with foster kids aging out,’” Jonathan said, and he found Youth Villages, one of the national nonprofits aimed at stopping the downward spiral of people like him.
He now lives in an off-campus apartment at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, drives part time for Uber to help support himself and will graduate in December with a bachelor’s degree in management with a concentration in operations.
Youth Villages is one of the nonprofits highlighted in this year’s annual giving guide released on Monday by the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania. The center, which researches and promotes charities that offer the most effective social good in specific areas, says one in eight people ages 16 to 24, or 4.9 million nationally, are considered disconnected, meaning that they don’t have a job and are not in high school or college. The rate is considerably higher in rural areas than urban ones. While these numbers have dropped since the depth of the Great Recession, the impact of that economic turmoil is still reverberating.
Yet too often, this population is ignored.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I found this article a little off the beaten track. For once, no fighting or arguing, just some attempts to help young people who could really use a little help.
Can’t read? Thank your local public school.
Disconnected? You mean like no cell service or internet access? That could be a plus.
What happened to grandma?
“She crawled out onto the roof, and there was a loose tile...”
It’s not because these youth are disconnected. It’s because they’re connected to the wrong spigots. Most of us drink from too many spigots.
The first thing these youth need to do is dress decently, talk decently, and look up to ordinary people with jobs and families.
And, if he does go back to crime, Bridgewater hosts three state prisons, iirc, including the mental/sex offender one. Think Boston Strangler, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, etc.
Lol. As soon as I hit that sentence, bs detector pinged.
No doubt that’s the excuse he gave, but probably not the whole story.
Yes, that seems to be the general idea of these sorts of programs. These young people have seen how to live wrong, and have decided to try to learn how to live right.
I hope they are successful, it would be helpful to society.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.