Read on Educating our Homeless and At-risk Youth Ages 18-24

by Christopher Clanton, Nederland Colorado resident 

How can a community respond to a growing “homeless problem?” This article is intended to be an informal proposal. A youth outreach center is a place of learning and support and is a proven and practical means to deescalate the feeling of conflict surrounding the “homeless problem” in your town. This article also dares to attempt to gain the approval of Nederland citizens that are not in the slightest bit empathetic towards our homeless citizens.

At what depth will we go to face this matter of our home?

The homeless conflict returns each Spring in Nederland Colorado. Ned citizens are truly grateful for our law enforcement and fire rescue teams, they care and have done a great job managing the homeless conflict. Located next to Boulder, our community is naturally in a position to demonstrate leadership in this way. Ned is full of educated accomplished leaders, evident in the ways we support our kids, our senior citizens, how we carefully develop our town, and how our community comes together and supports citizens and families in crisis. From an ecopsychological view, how we gather and care about each other is remarkable and reflects how we, as a community, care for ourselves as nature beings. This article is suggesting that how we care for our homeless youth also greatly reflects who we are and how we care for ourselves.   

Ned truly is a special place. Our people, music, festivals, carousel and mountains naturally draw visitors from the lowlands year around. To value “transpersonal service”, as a community, is to live with an ethic of care and sustainability facing this continuing truth of our town. What is going to be the narrative regarding the homeless conflict in our town? What will shape our lives and the knowledge of our home? How will our actions addressing this matter and reflect our connection with nature? Boulder has excellent resources for Homeless Adults, some of the best. A small town in Ned’s position has an effort to make with the Homeless Youth.

These days, transpersonal ecopsychology terminology is welcome in a community discussion. My apologies if language used is too metaphorical or different than you are accustomed to. This is an effort to be direct in meaning. Principles described are considered “forward thinking” in the field of small town homeless youth outreach. Ecopsychologically, the homeless are our muck, our dark place. And to understand the deep ecological and archetypal nature of the situation is to be curious what there may be to learn. Our collective frustrated disconnected state does not define this conflict.

Statistics tell us there are very few homeless youth that ever recover from being homeless after the age of 24. Data tells us that if these individuals can transition from being homeless before the age of 25, there is a likelihood they will not return. There is a grand potential in these young people, yet they go unsupported and they are growing in numbers. Examining our reciprocal nature includes our interrelationship to these individuals. That being said, the small town empathic view includes a message that “we absolutely are not going to allow destruction and damage in this human ecosystem”. Every Spring in Ned, vehicles and business are broken into. Every Spring, community members regularly state, “it is the homeless backpackers.” The residence, property owners, and business owners have spoken, and we stand up for what helps the entire ecosystem thrive. Supporting our at-risk youth that are homeless, turns our muck to compost, into what feeds our new. Our impoverished image of homeless people and how we respond to this situation, from nature’s lense, is an embodiment of us. By allowing our homeless to function in our lives informs us about who we are, and to develop a therapeutic practice moves us toward becoming an ecological society. In Ned’s case, our homeless visitors have created a tremendous ecological disturbance, but this situation also presents an important leadership opportunity.

Definitions:

Service makes a community ecosystem, is internal and relational. Transpersonal Service is connecting to something greater than the self. Transpersonal Service is required for a community to thrive. Contributing to a sustainable way is an important part of the wholeness of what we are. Homeless Youth Outreach efforts happen outside, within a youth center, and within jails. Ecopsychology is an earth-based approach to community, psychological and spiritual health and planetary sustainability. The human spirit is a direct reflection of the health of the earth, the state of our wildlife conservation efforts, and the changes emerging at the edges of ecosystems on our planet. The art of ecopsychology cultivates an awareness of our innate connections to nature, community service, and cultural diversity, as we are dependent on a healthy well being approach and a reciprocal interbeing approach. Ecopsychology makes no bones about it, “we are nature”, we should increase connection to nature and we can not avoid humans as a part of nature.

The benefits of a Homeless Youth Outreach Center:

A youth outreach center is a place for individualized learning and support. Improving how we are impacting the lives of our at-risk youth, ages 18-24, is vital. Our young men, young women, transgender, gay, straight, smart, motivated, creative, our young adult humankind represent an important part of our culture and community psychology. At a homeless youth center educators facilitate: regular outreach and mentoring, squat clean-up, graffiti clean-up, as well as, information sharing regarding local history and information regarding ecological and homeless disturbances. We share meals and stories, and support motivated individuals that wish to transition from living on the street. Services include GED support, work experience, job search support and advocacy, legal and medical advocacy, as well as, family advocacy. Pulling in this demographic good things happen. In my experience, those youth that don’t want support avoid us, they leave, but before they do they share the community’s messages regarding our homeless visitors. In a small town “an outsider” is easy to spot. Boulder has excellent resources and is the obvious solution for an adult to transition from living on the streets in Boulder County. For Ned to make an effort, such as a youth center, sends a peacefully message, “we are offering to work with 18-24s with ID that want to transition from living on the street.” Only those that become personal and cooperative with our community ecopsychology make it here.

Negative behaviors from our homeless visitors are widely received as disrespectful but they are also uninformed. Living outside in our rocky mountain foothills does something powerful to a person’s psyche. The wind howls, the body tightens, and the coldness felt from not having anyone to turn to often results in behaviors, such as, trespassing, theft, illegal fires, and vandalism including illegal waste management. Needles have been found in our park, and other locations. In my experience working with homeless youth, there is one message they all stand up for. “Being homeless is not criminal.” But at this point, in Ned, these acts feel like crimes against this community. The homeless youth understand that they are being judged for all the behaviors of all homeless visitors. This is certainly difficult for an outsider to fully understand initially. An outreach center informs visitors of town norms.

At a Youth Center we specialize in managing upset conflict energy. Such frustration is usually only directed at each other, and is occasionally expressed towards the police and “the rich”. Recalling my move to Nederland in 1995, I remember messages of support coming to me but I was a bit of a hostile youth myself, too busy lashing out at society to listen. Annoyed and consumed with angst at the time, these messages obviously still made a lasting impression. At a youth center, exploring this types of banter, deep questioning and listening exchanges, is at some level necessary because this is often their only method of communication. Staff often advocates to an individual’s parent(s). There is always two sides to a story, as truths of support are uncovered. I write this with all the professionalism I have. From my experience, I’ve learned that a huge percentage of homeless youth have social-emotional and behavioral disabilities, mental illness, are from homes that simply aren’t healthy. A youth center is a safe place to learn and develop oneself. Many of these individuals are from our Nederland community and our schools. An answer is to become personal with their stories.

As a learning community we are looking closer at how to facilitate learning in our at-risk youth 18-24. My experience with Ecopsychology driven instruction and transpersonal service-learning has opened rites of passage insights beyond my initial expectation. Insights into our schools, our community psychology, and into ourselves. An alarming number of Ned’s own kids struggle to be successful in our schools, struggle to become employable, and many can’t seem to stay out of legal trouble. Make no mistake, Nederland’s and Boulder’s own kids are becoming our homeless youth as well. Working within homeless youth centers of Portland Oregon, San Francisco and Boulder County I have studied the failures of our schools. As a special education teacher, I’ve closely witnessed many of Ned’s youth not have success in our schools, become unemployed young adults getting in trouble with the law, money, sex, drugs, and alcohol. I then worked with them as they turn to the homeless outreach centers of Boulder. Please consider, that as a community, our responsibility to educate our at-risk kids doesn’t go away after high school.

There are common skill deficits among these youth: stopping negative or harmful thoughts, and seeking positive attention, are two of the big ones. Schools can better teach coping skills, working with change, conflict, boredom, and frustration. These learners often require time for instruction around apology and accepting an apology, responding to kindness, accepting compliments and criticism. For these learners, advocating for themselves and learning to care for themselves is primary. Caring for their own belongings, managing their anger and frustrations, learning to accept defeat and consequences, to self-correct and show sensitivity, are all examples of critical learning. Our most at-risk need instruction in the areas of organization, being on-time, managing money, and planning ahead. Personal time management instruction is important for those who struggle to spend free time in a healthy productive way. For these learners, there is a sense that they are running from something, and that they are not content with their school and their world.

When I moved to Colorado in October of 1995, I was camping-out on West Magnolia, with limited gear, 24 years old and determined to become a Nederland resident. I fell in love with this place upon arrival and was instantly exposed to the elements of the community psychology ecosystem. That is part of my story, that I have emerged from, and that now haunts me. I worked my way through college and into a position at Nederland Middle Senior High School as a special education teacher. My daughter Mia has gone to school in Nederland since Kindergarten and is now in the High School.   

Professionalism serving at-risk youth includes considering the communities’ responsibilities verses an individual’s responsibilities. To me, this is “where the rubber meets the road” within this work. Instruction and support increases depending on an individual’s limitations. And there are rules and a method to engagement. Internal efforts are to stay relaxed to pay attention to the person’s balance. Listening for truths and learning opportunities without sacrificing our own balance, is a basic description of the internal method behind engagement. In their book, How Can I Help?, Dass and Gorman (1990) state clearly that, it is important to share information and principles without appearing as if we are trying to fix something that is wrong. Dass and Gorman say, “The initial state of mind we bring to any social action can go a long way to determining its character and consequences, especially if we’re looking to move others to act” (p.157). Facilitating this work includes accessing the stubborn, determined, and frustrated parts of ourselves that want to fix something. Within a youth outreach center, impacting the lives of a few special individuals that are ready to transition from living on the streets is the goal.

Living at altitude in the Rocky Mountains is to survive in a modern day native way. That is certainly different for all of us but it feels like an important acknowledgment as the populations grow and as low income housing becomes scarce. Affordable rental housing continues to be more and more scares. Over the passed few years, there has been a noticeable increase of strong feelings surrounding our town’s “homeless problem”. This conflict between social-economic demographics is a consistent part of our history in these mountains. Resolving this conflict may never be felt but as a community we can move forward holding space for growth with intention rather than being at the mercy of the situation. Thank goodness, our community is a communication-rich habitat where voices feel safe to speak up. To turn our backs on the homeless youth is to turn our noses up at them. Our homeless youth are an intelligence within our community psychology. They live on the edge of our ecosystem and represent our vulnerability as a species. In my experience, many people still don’t accept that these youth are “on the street” because they have no other choice, no other option. Please consider, that many don’t have the resources, the support, or the internal capacities to change their situation. Most live outside because that appears to be their only option. A youth outreach center is not an attempt to satisfy an immediate need. “It can’t be about going to the park to feed the pigeons”. This is a classic statement from the field of homeless youth outreach. Entering into this work is a decision to challenge ourselves, to look beyond the readily available.

With nature as the model, residents are the dominant species in this ecosystem gaining an upper hand, our homeless youth are an underdog species, and the adult homeless unfortunately continue to present themselves as an invasive species. The residence, being the dominant species in the ecosystem, should also be the most empathic. Although the frequency could be considered low, our wildlands have endured tremendous ecological disturbance that has gone “unprocessed”. Every Fall homeless populations thin, every Spring populations return. If we are to be positive engineers of change in nature, there is an element of getting information to these visitors. How will we adapt to this disturbance in our ecosystem? Do we disrupt it? Is this a storm that will pass? My suggestion is that anything less than a pliable therapeutic approach would produce more tension within our community psychology and this conflict will only build. Tending to the muck in our community psychology soil we compost for the new.

Shadows and limitations are subtle with this type of vocation. Initially the effort is to respectfully show up at the places where homeless youth gather, to listen deeply and encourage them. Outreach doesn’t occur when youth are in circles with homeless adults. Outcomes aren’t always goal-oriented, more an uncovering of a new approach to a common situation. During outreach there is an effort to notice the stuck places within us all, our reactive tendency to satisfy an immediate need. Support usually begins with legal and medical appointments, hygiene, safe-sex products, nutrition and hydration. These are nice places to start because until those needs are consistently met, it is challenging to make change. A youth center is a place where this type of support can happen. Determination must be patient because it is usually accompanied by a level of frustration. I regularly recognize a feeling of “spinning my wheels”, wanting something greater to happen faster, but the transpersonal develops slowly, trust is earned and authentic mentor relationships are born on their own time. We pull-in the special, those ready to do what it takes to become self-sufficient and have a better life. Judgments regarding urgency are tricky. Shadows and limitations of this work includes elements of time and trust, indicating the need for an organic change and renewal approach.

My continued observation and study includes a particular sect of the at-risk youth population, self-realized young people that repeatedly state that they “want to live outside”, that they are “out there by choice.” For these stubborn individuals, their rite of passage learning process includes understanding how different they are. The reasons why they aren’t “in society” are often verbalized. Their egos become anointed with bold statements that appear to lead to a temporary relief of pain and suffering. Being among others who’ve been “called to live outside” feels supportive and appeals to them. Facts are, they are afraid and masks are created to cover their discomfort from the rejections and disappointments of society and stereotypical ideas of family. They sometimes loudly articulate what has become of their living in the wilderness, and in cities landscapes. They speak of a guidance they’ve received from their learning, from wild beings, human and non-human. Telling their story, often includes this type of sharing, called forth from a genuine experience with nature. These voices are often rather upset. It’s not comfortable to listen to an angry voice and all voices of Ned’s homeless conflict are upset.

Being in these mountains, we’ve all gotten a taste of something meaningful. Our visitors are experiencing the same voice of nature that calls all of us to live here. Transpersonal ecopsychology driven instruction builds healthy connection with our wild selves and our inter-being relationships to all people as nature. Years ago I recall attempting to boost my image by saying, “our homeless community is the one area of cultural crisis I feel comfortable approaching”. Truthfully, I’d fight homelessness if I thought it would do any good. I’d fight it because it honestly scares me. Don’t get me wrong, I have a knack. I have a sensitivity and strength that comes from my parents and grandparents and I truly enjoy approaching these young people. When a young person has nowhere to turn that should make us all very uncomfortable. My internal “hostile youth” wants to blame public education or the government somehow. Hopefully, this informal proposal helps to inform leaders and supports change.

What I know about “help” is that it happens most effectively when we manage our responsibilities as educators verses the responsibilities of the individuals. On a statistical level, a youth outreach center and rites of passage learning methods are producing exciting results with our at-risk youth.

Town Councils, Community Boards and School Boards must move forward with an attitude that we can never do all we can. Within our schools, educators have learned that, for our at-risk students, supporting social emotional and behavioral learning is primary before all other learning can take place. There is an art to reaching our most at-risk. Support happens without trying to fix or change something. As Dass and Gorman (1990) point out, “It’s a politic of affinity, we don’t try to deny or manipulate individual differences. We honor them; in fact we seek them out-because we understand that before we undertake any serious social action, we need a strong sense of who we are” (p.164). Gaining conversation with homeless youth has always been a part of my story. My gift is spotting creative powerful young people. I recognize when these youth are unemployable, sleep outside, abuse their bodies with drugs and alcohol, that run in packs of confusing support, include themselves in groups of people that are at-risk, in crisis, and that often have mental illness. Instead of declaring them a problem to fix, I am suggesting that the homeless situation is a wild truth of our transpersonal ecopsychology. Outcomes happen best gradually, without force. Meaningful learning with this tough audience happen as moments present themselves.

I’m a believer. I actually believe the ‘spirit of the humanity’ is experienced and maybe unity is glimpsed as we connect with others through this form of service. Crucial is the faith that we are investing in a cumulative effect. As I develop this proposal I find myself more curious then concerned. Statistics tell us, that if left unsupported, homeless youth become homeless adults. That is a fact. Statistics and data frustrate me because they challenge my intuition that knows every situation is unique. Homeless youth populations in Boulder County are shocking year around, and I too regularly find it challenging to think there isn’t a problem to fix, mostly because we live in a place of such abundance.

I thank you for reading. I sincerely wish to appreciate and validate those community members that totally disagree and absolutely don’t care about my experience and study. Know that our homeless and at-risk youth are grappling with fundamental issues of materialism and individualism. And as we all are, they too are faced with what lies ahead in terms of housing, resource depletion, and habitat degradation. Thank you for considering that our homeless youth are not a problem but a catalyst for a new social collective that will naturally produce leaders.

All voices regarding this matter of our home are important. A youth outreach center skillfully brings voices together. Many describe homeless youth as a “community within a community”. This is a myth and isolation dynamic we must stop perpetuating. Homeless youth are a part of our Community Psychology.

With the support that comes from the ancient ones, the large boulders, the old trees, the mountains and all Earth’s elders we face this conflict situation together. For a community to approach this work would demonstrate a growth mindset, and would add to Nederland’s identity of leadership. Being in Boulder County we dwell in relationship to their homeless situation, which means we are in an ideal place to develop a youth outreach center as a vocation of care.

References

Dass, R. & Gorman, P. (1990).  How can I help?: Stories and reflections on service. New York,

NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.