Organization offers mentoring, training to help youths succeed
Keegan Ritchey and Ray Rivera are both 17 and will pursue different things in life, but they share the same goal of wanting to go to college.
“My father barely made it through high school and my mom dropped out of high school,” said Rivera, who wants to study sociology and criminal justice in hopes of one day becoming a private investigator. “I want to be the one that breaks that cycle.”
Ritchey wants a career in business and marketing and maybe graphic design. “I just know that to get a good job and advance, you have to have a college degree,” Ritchey said. “That’s the best way to succeed.”
Ritchey and Rivera also are being helped by Save Our Youth, a Denverbased youth development organization that provides at-risk youth with educational and spiritual skills though longterm mentoring from business leaders and other professionals in the metro area, said Keith Mcvaney, the organization’s educational director.
“We help them through what is a long and sometimes confusing process of picking the right college or any postcollege opportunity, and we make sure they succeed once they get there,” McVaney said.
Save Our Youth is a recipient of Season to Share funding.
Save Our Youth was formed in 1994 as a response to Denver’s infamous “Summer of Violence” in 1993, during which 73 people were killed in gang-related violence. The group’s organizers wanted to improve the opportunities for kids from the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
“We wanted them to see there are alternatives to the streets and violence,” Mcvaney said.
Thousands of kids who otherwise may have not even tried to get into college have been helped since then, he said.
In 2017, 424 kids — ages 10 to 17 — were supported by Save Our Youth’s mentoring program, officials said. The average mentor match in Save Our Youth is 42 months, compared with the national average of nine months in sim- ilar programs.
There are 45 Save Our Youth-mentored students now in college, and the group enjoys an 85 percent four-year, on-time graduation rate, the group said.
Students in their senior year of high school attend monthly meetings with their mentors and complete college entrance, scholarship and Federal Student Aid applications. “At the end of the senior year, college prep students are equipped with all the tools needed to transition into college,” Mcvaney said.
Mentors also check on Save Our Youth students while in college to make sure they remain on track, he said.
Save Our Youth also boasts a Master Apprentice program that matches students with a business to teach them a viable trade in today’s technologically centered world, Mcvaney said. “Lots of companies have specific needs that they need to fill as soon as possible, and many of our kids can get hired directly from here,” he said.
Grant Hafner, a finance major at Colorado State University, has worked as a mentor since 2011 after he learned of Save Our Youth through his job at FirstBank.
“Save Our Youth came in and talked about their program to help kids, and it made me think that maybe I could help,” Hafner said. “I think we really help because we show these kids there are plenty of options out there, and that’s important.”