Youth Speak Out: Shared Experiences Help Rural Youth Leaders Connect

Three young men discuss how their past experiences as runaway and foster youth inform their current work with the programs that helped them.

Time: 4:41 | Size: 4.3 MB |

NCFY:  Welcome to Youth Speak Out, a podcast series from the Family and Youth Services Bureau. Today we talk to three youth leaders from the Bureau's Rural Homeless Youth Initiative. These young men, who were all once homeless or foster youth themselves, provide advice on ways to engage rural youth in transitional living services. 

Alex Whipple is a youth leader for his Vermont-based transitional living program, as well as a former runaway youth himself. He explains why his job mostly requires him to empower young people. 

ALEX WHIPPLE:  Getting youth into a TLP isn't something really that we can try to advocate. It's something they have to make their decision [about] on their own. But whenever I recommend something to them, they're not really sure what a TLP is, Transitional Living Program. And they are kind of scared of the thought… I don't know, maybe just it's overwhelming that they're finally becoming an adult.

But TLPs aren't something a lot of people in my community are really ambitious for. I mean, recruiting kids to like teen centers and getting them to do community service and be on the Youth Advisory Board has been successful. You've just got to try to make them comfortable with it. Make them feel like they're accepted and happy. Cards are a really big thing, youth summits, conferences, things like that to try to help people spread the word that the TLPs are really awesome, has been something I've tried to do. 

We have representatives like TLP workers talk about programs in front of people who are in TLPs. I mean, even if it's not like a TLP for your community, just getting somebody into a TLP is successful and it helps like keep TLPs around.

NCFY:  John Coty, another youth leader from Vermont, was in the foster care system as a teenager. He brings firsthand knowledge of their difficulties to his relationship with foster and homeless youth. 

JOHN COTY:  I take them snowboarding because we live on mountains and I'm a pretty avid snowboarder. And I'll take them wakeboarding because we wakeboard out there. So I kind of just get them away for a day so they can see that not everything you do that is fun has to have something to do with breaking the law like their friends show them. And there's positive examples of things that you can do that are exciting and like most kids look for breaking the law as like a big rush or some kind of adrenaline thing. But there's also things like snowboarding and wakeboarding and jumping off a cliff that we have in Vermont. Like, those are big things that you can just do instead, positive things. 

NCFY:  Damian Dominguez was a homeless teen in Nebraska before he entered a transitional living program, Project SOS. His job as he sees it is to get these typically reluctant youth to open up and accept help. 

DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ:  The only two challenges that I see is either talking to the kids about their problems...or having them actually want to talk to the people about their problems, and coming into the hangout spots that we have. 

Like, we usually have like nights where we have kids come into SOS to either come play videogames with other kids or to come associate with the other kids that we know. Or come play basketball or four square or anything they really want to do. And then we either talk to them and see if they have any problems.  But some of them usually like don't really want to talk to us because they don't really know us that well. So that's like another problem. 

For me, it's kind of easier now because the kids that I meet, I help now, are the ones that I went to school with or the ones that I used to talk to in school. So if they needed help, I just go ask them and see if they need anything. And usually, they usually talk to me now since they know me from school. 

I just identify with most of the kids now because I used to be in that situation where I didn't agree with my parents or my parent. And they just usually neglected me. And that's what kind of happens now. Like parents nowadays, they expect the kids to do whatever they want them to. But if they don't, they usually kick them out. And if they do something wrong for once, like just one thing, they usually get like really mad at their kids and just like them to leave right away. 

So that's what happened to me. So I help them by like talking to them and seeing if they need more help or someone to talk to. And then I give them the number for SOS or TLP or the shelter.

NCFY:  For more information on transitional living and rural homeless youth programs, visit the National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth online at ncfy.acf.hhs.gov.

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