Rio Grande City Youth Mentoring Program Advocating Latino Education and Recreation

Vital Stats

Leonel L

Rio Grande City, TX

people helped120
People Doing It 18

The Problem

We are trying to advocate the importance of higher education and couple our activities with recreational events. Starr County has the highest rate of poverty in the state of Texas. Plagued by Mexican Drug Cartel wars, positive recreational activities are scarce. We try to implant our message of higher education into recreational events in hopes that the child will utilize the messages to break the cycle of poverty through attaining a degree. According to the New York Times in 2005, 59% of children in my county live below the poverty line and by the time the children hit elementary school, 50% suffer from obesity. Because of the healthcare and socioeconomic disparities that are prevalent in our area, we believe in spreading positive messages about nutrition, recreation, and education. By bringing opportunities for recreation, raising awareness about healthcare disparities, and providing mentors as positive role models, we feel that we can increase the rate of college applicants, increase the rate of college graduates, lower the rate of poverty, lower the obesity rate, and keep children off the dangerous streets of Starr County.

Plan of Action

I founded the Rio Grande City Youth Mentoring Program in 2008. I started by working with a small group of student athletes and spreading the message of higher education. Our events have helped over one hundred children. Through event planning, organizing sponsors, and promoting our event through media sources, we have been successful in getting kids active, teaching them the importance of nutrition, and inspiring them to pursue higher education by connecting them with mentors that are currently in college. We feel that it is more effective to use role models and mentors that played in the same streets as the kids do. We use graduates of our local high school that are currently enrolled in college, playing college athletics, or pursuing graduate/professional school. Many of these kids have no strong role models at home. The joy and inspiration on the faces of the kids when doing something as little as talking about baseball is something that keeps our volunteers passionate about the cause. We plan to continue hosting baseball camps, and expand to summer education camps. We also plan to expand to the adjacent counties in the summer and fall of 2012.