Volume VII, Number 2, Spring 2001

Issue Topic: Out-of-School Time Issue #2

Promising Practices

All for Our Future

Luis Carlos Greer and Tamara Martinez, youth living in Arizona, describe how they got involved by working with a local community organization to make a change in their community.

We know that each of us is in control of ourselves and what we do, but have you ever felt like what you did was wrong or what you said was useless? Through our work we have discovered that this is the way most youth feel every time they try to make a change in their community. Too many adults in the community overlook the youth. “So what?” they’d say, “who cares?” or even “what do you know?” Confronted by these demoralizing questions many youth give up. We knew we had to change the perception of youth, but how?

The answer was presented to us. The local community organization (Compañeros, Douglas, AZ) with which we worked, presented us with a project. We could do whatever we wanted with the stipulation that it had to be done with the organization’s sister partnerships (Juntos Unidos, Nogales, AZ and Puentes de Amistad, Yuma, AZ), both of which are located on the Arizona/Mexico border.

Within a week, youth from the three sister organizations were all brought together in a central location. The youth from each group stuck to their own and didn’t talk to each other. When words did start flying we were surprised to hear that we have a lot of similar problems. We knew that we wanted to make a change, but how? We brainstormed and came to a conclusion - how could we begin to make change without knowing what the youth wanted? We decided that a youth survey would best fit our needs.

Within a month we were on our way to determining what needed to be addressed. After some training on how to write a survey, we wrote questions addressing the problems we discussed at the first meeting. In no time the survey was finished. It consisted of 25 quantitative and qualitative questions covering issues affecting border teens today. From pollution to teen pregnancy, from our perspective, the survey covered it all and in two languages (Spanish/English). Now the hard part was over! Or was it?

Now that the survey was written, we had to administer it. This step proved to be more trying than we originally thought. It was decided that the survey would be disseminated to teens within the local middle schools and high schools. Resistance from school administration made this step more difficult than we thought it really should have been. Eventually our persistence paid off; the survey was given out to students ages 11–18 in four border communities in Arizona: Douglas, Naco/Bisbee, Nogales, and Yuma.

Once the surveys were completed, we got together once again. We had approximately 1,500 surveys completed, and the question was what to do with them. The experts from the University of Arizona Rural Health Office trained us to input the data into the computer, using Excel to capture the data. This proved to be a long tedious task. Back home, we spent hour after hour inputting these data, and most of us gave up our summers and some activities in order to do this. Finally we were done.

Once again, we came together to receive more training. Collecting the data was one thing, interpreting it was another. The analysis of our survey proved to be both fun and exhausting. We discovered that although most youth agreed that we had problems, the priorities were much different. As we graphed the results, new ideas kept coming to our minds.

As we were completing our analysis, we received an invitation from the National Hispanic/Latino Prevention Cluster Conference to present our results. We quickly accepted the invitation. The fact that the conference was in Boston, Massachusetts weighed heavily on our decision. We were going to be the first youth group ever to present at the conference and we felt that this would be a giant step forward for youth.

So there we were, once again walking into a room of doubting adults. This was our chance to prove not only to our community, but also to adults all over the country, that youth can make a difference. We were extremely nervous, but we had a strong presentation ready. After giving up our jitters, we gave our presentation. At the end there was a long eerie silence. A clap finally broke the silence and that clap turned into many. Before we knew it the room was filled with the sound of a standing ovation.

After the applause died down, we were overwhelmed with questions about how to get other youth involved in their communities and most importantly, they wanted our opinions on real issues and problems. We couldn’t believe that they wanted our opinions. It was a milestone in our struggle for a voice in our communities.

We were glad our hard work came in handy. After the survey we put the results to work. One big concern the youth who answered the survey had was lack of education. Not of math and science, but of issues and situations they faced each and every day. This resulted in a presentation at the Compañeros Youth Council’s Annual “Youth Learning to Lead the Future Conference.” Yes, this was more work, but we feel that if youth are the future, they must have a voice in the present.

Luis Carlos Greer, Tamara Martinez

For more information, contact:
Lori Tapia
Douglas Unified School District
21st Century Community Learning Centers District Coordinator
1235 7th Street
Douglas, AZ 85607