Our Young Lives Are Precious
Contributed by Melissa Rigas
At the MATSU Food Bank, part of our mission is to provide other institutions, pantries, and organizations with items they are in need of – be that food, hygiene products and sometimes other specific items for specific organizations.
One of these organizations, YoungLife/YoungLives is very special to our hearts. We were contacted by them this past summer and a colleague noted what they needed, so we started putting things aside to help out.
I had a sit down with the Valley Coordinator of YoungLife/YoungLives, Brittany Reed, last Monday and she explained and elaborated on what exactly they do and how they help our community.
To begin with, YoungLives is focused on ministry for adolescent parents. They exist to help teenage parents grow in life, leadership, and faith. As the organization is not specific to Alaska, I wanted to know what their mission was specifically in the Valley?
Brittany emphasized a multigenerational approach, empowering young women and young Moms and Dads to be successful in their parenting skills to raise healthy and balanced children. These parents range from 11 years old to 24 years old, so as you can see, some of them are still children themselves.
My next question was what do they provide for these young parents and what do they need? As you can imagine, the list is not short. Motherly products, diapers, baby food and cereals, clothing, bibs, birthday gifts and cakes, etc... They offer an opportunity to become a sponsor for Moms’ life packs and Heartreach offers parenting classes.
In addition, they provide resource support, community and weekly events and relationships. The weekly events create healthy communities for teenage parents and ways of healthy living on life mentorship. What really struck me throughout our conversation was that decisions in all cases are made on an individual basis and this creates an atmosphere of TRUST, a crucial component in our dealings with people.
What touched me the deepest was knowing that these young people felt that because they are young, they aren’t necessarily taken seriously and that they are used to being loved ‘conditionally’. Brittany also mentioned to me that Alaska is ranked 12th out of the 50 U.S. States for teen pregnancy. Our kids must never have to go through this alone.
YoungLives offers this and so much more to our young parents, but it is difficult to run an organization without volunteers when you are a 501(c)3 and you are understaffed. Yes, Brittany needs VOLUNTEERS! They are very serious at YoungLives. Brittany is out there, but she is one person. By creating partnerships with community agencies, like the MSATSU Food Bank, they can build bridges to connect parents to the resources that help them evolve into strong and healthy families. By meeting these practical needs, YoungLives earns the right and trust to build deeper relationships with our youth and THIS, this creates HOPE.
You can contact Brittany by phone at 907-315-3033 or at her e-mail brittany.younglivesmatsu@gmail.com where she can go into more depth. A visit to their website, ylvasps.org, will give you the opportunity to see for yourself what they do!
I’ll end this article on something that Brittany said to me before we concluded, “We are not giving them a handout; we are giving them a hand up”. Rock on...