An ASU community group is reaching out to help at-risk youth in Guadalupe avoid making choices that could hurt them in the future.
Run by student volunteers at the Tempe campus, HEAL International is pairing ASU students with youth in the small town between Phoenix and Tempe to show children the power of good choices.
“The most important thing we're doing in Arizona is our mentoring program for at-risk youth in Guadalupe,” said Damien Salamone, executive director of HEAL International. “Our volunteering there is with children from ages seven to 18, and is intended to empower them to make good choices for their health.”
HEAL International was created to promote health literacy and provides micro-financing, medical supplies and health care to resource-limited communities.
Salamone said Guadalupe often offers a litany of destructive choices for Arizona’s youth.
“The children and teens we serve face tough decisions every day … many have older siblings, and in some cases friends, who are in gangs,” Salamone said.
Most of the youth face increasingly difficult options about whether or not to use drugs and have sex at very young ages, he said, and some must even choose if they will follow their parents and siblings’ footsteps into jail.
“HEAL volunteers show them another path ... a path that leads through college [and] to another kind of life,” he said.
Biology junior Stephan Holly has been volunteering with HEAL since March.
Every Tuesday and Thursday for an hour and a half, Holly travels to the Guadalupe Public Library for a project known as “White 33.”
The project requires that Holly mentor a Guadalupe youth who is deemed susceptible to drugs, unsafe sex and gang violence.
“I’ve grown up in [the] Los Angeles middle class and I really haven’t had to work for money because my parents have been able to support me,” Holly said. “People take that for granted every day, and seeing these kids and how much they don’t have really inspires me to want to help them make a better life.”
HEAL volunteers attempt to reach a large audience with their message by operating from multiple locations around Arizona. The organization also has volunteers assisting in Tanzania and paid employees working in East Africa.
HEAL uses professional trainers to support the organization’s volunteers, including workers from ASU’s Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center. SIRC conducts minority health and health disparities research, training and community outreach.
“The curriculum we use for prevention of drug abuse was developed at ASU and is a nationally certified curriculum for education,” Salamone said.
New HEAL volunteers now sign a yearlong contract in order to volunteer.
HEAL volunteers began working in Guadalupe in May of 2007. A new batch of volunteers and youth arrive each semester.
Danya Anouti, a biology and global studies junior, has volunteered with HEAL since September and teaches sexual health to at-risk youth at the Guadalupe Boys and Girls Club.
“There is not a lot of education on sexual health and protecting against sexually transmitted infections,” Anouti said.
Anouti said she believes that without HEAL’s intervention in the Guadalupe community, the teen pregnancy rate and prison population would rise.
“Education is really important … it’s the key to preventing a lot of problems society is facing right now,” she said.
Salamone said that while not all of the Guadalupe youth are old enough for the prevention education, they will eventually be faced with decisions about drugs, sex and lifestyle.
He said he hopes the values instilled in the mentees will be passed down to future generations of Guadalupe youth.
“We hope to plant seeds that will enable them to make good choices when the time comes,” he said.
Reach the reporter at tdmcknig@asu.edu
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