Positive Paths for Boys & Young Men

The goal of the CRACE project is to provide the resources and materials for at-risk youth and truant students to recover academic credit, provide the resources and networking opportunities for future career exploration, develop opportunities for male youth to experience and develop leadership skills and ultimately to reduce school delinquency and increase student performance in school. The target demographic for the program are currently enrolled Cocopah Tribal male youth under the age of 18 who are enrolled in school or have recently been expelled.

The primary goal of this program uses Community-based engagement as the intervention strategy to reduce middle school and high school dropout rates within Pueblo Indian communities. It also teaches young Indigenous boys and men the value of positive mentors by helping to foster those relationships. This is accomplished by reinforcing cultural values and traditions that are the foundation for Pueblo Indian identity. The program has four pragmatic focus areas which builds upon Pueblo Indian core values to help young Indigenous boys and men gain the skills necessary to become socially and culturally literate. The focus areas include an outdoor component, a community action component, a personal development component and an education component. Each of these programmatic areas has a subset of objectives that meet the primary goal.

The TWU SENGIPAA ING VI (Journey of Becoming a Man) project will re-engage youth of the six Tewa speaking pueblos in Northern New Mexico who may be disconnected from work or school by providing opportunities for structured and experiential learning with positive Native adult male role models and mentors for native boys aged 14-18 years. A Coordinator will oversee project activities to assure objectives are met and to address logistics such as transportation and communication. We anticipate recruiting 5-6 men who will each work with 2-3 assigned boys and young men. We will utilize our existing A’Gin Healthy Sexuality Body Sovereignty interactive youth programming and strengthen the focus on native boys and young men by adding components adapted from the Call To Men model, http://www.acalltomen.org. These initiatives have shown their effectiveness in motivating youth to reach their potential, increasing youth leadership capacity, and building skills for future careers.

All My Relations: Mentoring Native American Young Men and Boys Project will focus on pairing 20 Native American young men and boys who are at risk of dropping out of high school or who have dropped out of high school in our area with 9 respected Native American adult men and elders and one Native American woman teacher who are committed to working with these youth. The primary purpose of this mentoring project is to deepen relationships with these young men and boys with respected adult Navajo men in their community who will engage the youth regularly throughout the year with positive role modeling and friendly but firm one-on-one conversations about finding their purpose and moving intentionally toward their goals in life. This project will be based in the southwestern corner of the Navajo Nation in Arizona.

The Tribal Empowerment Program will implement the Young Warrior Initiative, a project that will target boys in grades 6th through 12th by putting them in contact with positive male role-models to spend time with and learn through cultural activities. The male role-models will come from the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo community and neighboring Pueblos and provide the participants with guided work-shops such as bow and arrow, drum, and pottery making, while instilling them with the educational direction of being educated to “walk in two worlds”, learning both their cultural heritage and preparing themselves to be leaders in a modern world. The program will further expose the participants to ancestral homelands as well as institutions of higher education with Native American Specific programs such as the University of Arizona. The participants will have their grades and school attendance monitored throughout the program in order to gauge the program effectiveness.