YMCA Urban Warriors Pairs Veterans with Kids

War Vets, Kids Scarred by Gangs Help Each Other
CHICAGO
By SHARON COHEN AP National Writer
Sep 27, 2014

Jorge Maya sat in a circle at his neighborhood YMCA, a sturdy Afghanistan vet listening to a group of teenage boys scarred by gang violence.

There was Sammy, 16, who could describe the times he'd dodged gunfire, once ducking behind a tree.

Anderson, 17, who'd been around gangs most of his life. By his teens, he was carrying knives and bricks for protection.

And 14-year-old Fernando, who was just 12 when a pistol-wielding kid killed his friend.

Maya's own story was much the same. He'd grown up on the same streets, faced the same dangers, known the same temptations. He'd escaped Little Village, the largely Mexican community that had been home. He eventually joined the Army, trading one violent place for another, a war zone far away. And when he returned, he felt lost.

Now he was at the Y, sitting with other Afghanistan and Iraq vets and these teens, the two groups bound by a history of violence and trauma — on distant battlefields, nearby street corners or both.

They were the first class of a new YMCA-sponsored pilot program, Urban Warriors. For a dozen Saturdays, the two generations opened their hearts and minds, the vets finding new purpose after the war, the kids drawing guidance from mentors who understood their lives.

"I told them I've been through tough times," Maya says. "I've been shot. I dropped out of high school. I'd say, 'Look man, you can do something different with yourself. If I can do it, you can, too.'... There is hope."
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'Trying to Hold On' Amid The Despair of D.C.'s Streets

"You got a lot of people walking around, traumatized or scared or angry or sad," Bowers said. "It's kind of an urban battleground. We never know how people's visions are limited when they live in an environment where bodies on the street are the norm."

'Trying to Hold On' Amid The Despair of D.C.'s Streets
Teen Looks to Dreams of Education, Peace
By Robert E. Pierre and Clarence Williams
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 9, 2008; Page A01

Monica Watts, two months out of high school, buried another brother this week.



She barely remembers her older brother Donald, who was killed during a robbery more than a decade ago. Her baby brother, John, 18, was shot to death July 25 in Forestville as he tried to rob an off-duty officer, Prince George's County police said. He was a year her junior but felt like her twin. She called him "Streets," and he belonged to the cohort most likely to be killed: young, black, male, involved with the criminal justice system.

Since 1989, the year Watts was born, 6,000 homicides have been recorded in the District. By her count, Watts, at 19, has lost more than a dozen relatives and friends to violence since 2003. One was stabbed; the others were shot. Two brothers. Two boyfriends. A host of other young men and women in their teens and 20s.

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