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Berwyn, IL —
For a group of 11 students at Youth Crossroads, a recent service trip to the Cheyenne River Youth Project in Eagle Butte, South Dakota more than just a chance to take their anti-bullying campaign on the road. It was a chance to change their perspective.
Instead of their normal spring break, 11 students predominantly from Morton High School District 201 traveled to an American Indian reservation with unemployment rates nearing 80 percent and a suicide rate nearly twice the national average.
The Cheyenne River Youth Project aims to help American Indian students struggling to cope with those surroundings.
During their service trip, Youth Crossroads' students served as counselors to their peers and even helped cook and clean at the Cheyenne River Youth Project. The students learned while they worked, and came home with lessons they said they’ll take with them as they enter adulthood.
“One of the things that is unique about our program is that we don't just choose a random group of kids,” said Joel Wallen, Youth Crossroads’ youth programs coordinator. “They need to be trained and to complete one service project in their community before they can go and serve another community.”
Youth Crossroads, an area nonprofit group focusing on at-risk teenagers, recently decided to branch out from intervention and counseling services. Now, they also give students who aren’t at risk a chance to become leaders.
This year’s service trip was only the second in Youth Crossroads’ 40-year history. Although the trips are designed to give students a chance to serve those in need, they seem to gain at least as much as they give.
Change of place, change of mind
Students from the Morton High School system could be forgiven for thinking they’re underprivileged. Their school district lags well behind standardized testing benchmarks, and they receive less funding than their neighbors in Oak Park, Riverside and even the city of Chicago.
But even the problems they face with drugs and gangs pale in comparison to their peers along the Cheyenne River.
"One girl approached me and said there was this one guy that didn't like her uncle that had tied her up to a chair and made her watch him stabbing her uncle to death," said Sandra Ortiz, a senior at Morton East who attended the trip. "It was shocking because nobody knew about it. It was shocking because I was the first person she'd ever told. She'd never had any counseling."
For a group of 11 students at Youth Crossroads, a recent service trip to the Cheyenne River Youth Project in Eagle Butte, South Dakota more than just a chance to take their anti-bullying campaign on the road. It was a chance to change their perspective.
Instead of their normal spring break, 11 students predominantly from Morton High School District 201 traveled to an American Indian reservation with unemployment rates nearing 80 percent and a suicide rate nearly twice the national average.
The Cheyenne River Youth Project aims to help American Indian students struggling to cope with those surroundings.
During their service trip, Youth Crossroads' students served as counselors to their peers and even helped cook and clean at the Cheyenne River Youth Project. The students learned while they worked, and came home with lessons they said they’ll take with them as they enter adulthood.
“One of the things that is unique about our program is that we don't just choose a random group of kids,” said Joel Wallen, Youth Crossroads’ youth programs coordinator. “They need to be trained and to complete one service project in their community before they can go and serve another community.”
Youth Crossroads, an area nonprofit group focusing on at-risk teenagers, recently decided to branch out from intervention and counseling services. Now, they also give students who aren’t at risk a chance to become leaders.
This year’s service trip was only the second in Youth Crossroads’ 40-year history. Although the trips are designed to give students a chance to serve those in need, they seem to gain at least as much as they give.
Change of place, change of mind
Students from the Morton High School system could be forgiven for thinking they’re underprivileged. Their school district lags well behind standardized testing benchmarks, and they receive less funding than their neighbors in Oak Park, Riverside and even the city of Chicago.
But even the problems they face with drugs and gangs pale in comparison to their peers along the Cheyenne River.
"One girl approached me and said there was this one guy that didn't like her uncle that had tied her up to a chair and made her watch him stabbing her uncle to death," said Sandra Ortiz, a senior at Morton East who attended the trip. "It was shocking because nobody knew about it. It was shocking because I was the first person she'd ever told. She'd never had any counseling."
The community served by the Cheyenne River Youth Project had a spate of 17 suicides in 2009, Ortiz said. For a K-12 school district of about 400 students, the impact was huge.
Suicide and depression also have become an unspoken part of the culture that the youth project faces an uphill struggle in fighting.
Morton West Junior Monica Aleman said she was serving dinner to kids in the main center when an 11-year-old girl with cuts on her wrist approached her.
“I asked her and she just said, ‘oh, I cut my wrist. Don't you?’” Aleman said. "She told me she did it because her friends do it and after that, I wanted to cry right there in front of her and tell her, “no, it's not cool. Don't do it. Just because your friends do it doesn't mean you have to do it.’"
But serving at the Cheyenne River Youth Project was more than just a series of compelling stories for the students at Youth Crossroads. It forced them to reevaluate their own lives and appreciate the things they have, they said.
They’re even now more likely to help out their parents with chores.
"When I came back, it wasn't just the material things, but I learned to value my family, too," Ortiz said. "I learned to be more grateful because of them. We all have our little flaws and stuff, but at the end of the day, we’re all doing the best we can."
Aleman also said she appreciates her surroundings more. One of the youths told her she’d routinely drive three hours from the reservation just to buy a particular brand of jeans that she likes.
"I could just walk across the street and there's North Riverside Park Mall,” Aleman added. “We have everything around us, but we don't really care about it as much and we should be grateful for it.”
Crossing new paths
For Youth Crossroads, giving the “good” kids a chance to improve themselves is in some ways a breath of fresh air.
"Historically, Youth Crossroads has been an intervention agency, and we still do a lot of individual and group counseling," Wallen explained. "The agency took a shift and started focusing a little bit more on doing prevention work.”
The organization now uses its leadership program to improve the image of youths in the community.
"We want to change the perception of community members so adults are seeing teenagers as assets to the community, not liabilities," Wallen added.
And this program isn’t a distraction from the main work of intervention, said Jessica Schwartz, a youth leadership project manager with Youth Crossroads.
“With the youth leadership program, we really try to build on the positive strength of youth in the community and build up the positive in order to combat the negative side,” she said. “We're working towards a solution, rather than just managing the problem.”
