Using lessons of prison to reach Phoenix youths

Felix Moran strolled through his old west Phoenix neighborhood on a recent sweltering Saturday, stopping again and again to visit with people who wanted to talk. His quick smile and outgoing personality were a magnet.

Moran’s charisma wasn’t always such an asset. At 17, he persuaded neighborhood friends to follow his lead in robbing a convenience store, which landed him in prison.

But now the 25-year-old Moran is using his leadership skills to identify kids facing challenges and rally them to achieve their goals.

“My strategy is just going off of my own experience,” he said while standing in the side yard of a mobile home near 67th Avenue and Van Buren Street. Nearby, a childhood buddy fixed a bicycle. “I know what they’re going through.”

Moran’s new job as youth outreach coordinator through Maricopa Education Service Agency is to work with young people ages 16 to 24 who are sitting at home, without direction, and connect them with jobs, school or non-profits.

His mission comes at a critical time.

“Phoenix has one of the highest rates of disconnected youth. That means youth that are not working, not going to school or not doing anything to contribute to society,” Moran said. “We’re trying to ... find these youth so we can bring them into our society, find them a job, find them a good program they can learn from.”

In 2010, the Greater Phoenix area ranked worst among U.S. metropolises for disconnected youths.

Nearly 100,000 disconnected youths lived in Maricopa County that year, a national study using U.S. census data showed. That’s nearly the size of the city of Surprise.

It was an alarm call to local leaders, who formed a coalition to combat the problem and called it Opportunities for Youth.

Their aggressive efforts are working. Metro Phoenix decreased its population of disconnected youths more than any urban area in the U.S. from 2010 to 2015, according to a new report.

The 26 percent drop, shrinking the number of disconnected youths to about 74,000, is too dramatic to be explained simply by improvements in the economy, said Kristen Lewis, co-director of Measure of America, the national organization that produces the youthdisconnection reports.

“I’m giving them a big thumbs-up,” Lewis said. “We’ve been watching Phoenix closely. They really brought together all of the key players. They took it on in such a serious way, saying, ‘We can’t be last.’ ”

Moran is key to reaching teenagers who have dropped out of high school or are struggling to find work, especially if a criminal record is hampering them, she said.

“That kind of person who’s had the experience himself can be such a motivational person for young people,” Lewis said.

Moran, she said, demonstrates that “it’s not too late, (and) I can totally turn my life around.”

Dozens of organizations around the Valley serve young people, said Tamela Franks, executive director of Opportunities for Youth, which united the organizations to work together. Reaching kids is the problem. Lower-than-expected attendance at a recent job fair for disconnected youths shows why Moran and teams of young people he will lead are important to creating strategy, Franks said. Text messages about the job fair went to about 12,000 youths. Of those, 500 registered, but fewer than 200 showed up, she said.

“It’s not going to come from all of us bigwigs around the table,” Franks said. “It’s going to come from Felix, who knows how they feel.”

One of Moran’s strategies is to change the locations where recruiters try to connect with kids. He wants to drop flyers at smoke shops and liquor stores, to hold neighborhood barbecues, to visit barbershops — the places Moran used to hang out.

“It was rare for me to even go to a library,” he said. “It was rare for me to even go to a community center.”

As Moran described his vision back in his old neighborhood, where Chihuahuas barked and residents chatted on porches, a few of his friends marveled at the transformation he has made.

“As soon as he came out of prison, he went from street Felix ...” Danny Lucero, 20, who had been fixing the bicycle, started to say.

“… to angel Felix,” Sam Lucero, 18, finished. “It’s crazy, because we wouldn’t imagine him like that.”

The brothers remembered when Moran joined a gang and was arrested for leading local kids on a late-night raid at a corner market.

In prison, Moran earned a GED. But when he got out, the felony made finding work difficult. He picked up low-wage jobs in construction and fast food. It was hardly enough to care for his son and daughter.

His life took a major turn two years ago. Moran connected with a series of government agencies and non-profits that work with disconnected young people: Arizona@Work, YouthBuild, Public Allies and, finally, Opportunities for Youth.

The programs gave him specialized construction training, mentors and the confidence that his voice should be heard to help others.

“I thought I was the only one going through this struggle. I didn’t even think a whole city was going through it,” Moran said. “I want everybody to be impacted by what I’m doing. I tell everybody I know: ‘If you’re successful, I’m successful.’”

Before Moran left the neighborhood, the first recruit for the outreach team appeared: Danny Lucero.

“If you need any help with that,” Lucero called after him, “let me know.”

“That kind of person who’s had the experience himself can be such a motivational person for young people.” KRISTEN LEWIS CO-DIRECTOR, MEASURE OF AMERICA, ON FELIX MORAN