Thank you for visiting my fundraising page!
I am asking for a modest (or not so modest) donation today for my friend Juan and all the young people courageous enough to try to escape “the life”.
These young people are trying to get out of gangs in LA.
Donating through this website is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to support my fundraising efforts for the organizations that save the lives of these courageous young people.
Many thanks for your support -- and don't forget to forward this to anyone who you think might want to donate too!
Last month I was at workshop with 108 men. Juan is from LA. Thankfully, he had found an organization (Homeboys Industries and Youth Mentoring Connection - YMC) that helps young men like him take the steps and get the support they need to save their life – literally and figuratively.
Our event was in a redwood forest. Juan had never spent time in the woods before and he went hiking every chance he could get. He couldn’t get enough of it. On the second day of the 5-day event, I said to Juan, "I want to go hiking with you!"
It didn’t happen until the last morning. On the last morning I was tired, had some cleaning responsibilities to do, and gave up the idea that I was going to get to hike with him.
My bunk mate saw him walking through our camp and said "hey, good morning Juan." Juan said, "good morning, have you seen that dude Morgan? I've been looking for him for 30 minutes. We gotta go hiking. I said I would find him."
Now, Juan lives in the part of LA that movies are made about - the tough ones. There is no shortage of anger and feeling of oppression among the Latino and black population of those neighborhoods. White privilege isn’t a foreign concept to them and they have some feelings about that.
So here I am a white guy who said 3 days ago that I want to go hiking (and A LOT happened in those 3 days), and he remembered that I wanted to go with him, and he searches at 6:30 in the morning for me.
It would have been so easy for him to forget, blow me off, think, “who cares about that white dude”, give up his search. But he didn’t.
He remembered and put a lot of effort into searching for me.
That is not exactly my profile of an LA gang member. That is my profile of the kind of human being that we need more of in today’s world.
We had a great hike. Juan is an amazing young man. Full of humanity. Wanting badly to find a way out of the violence that is his life. Wanting to enjoy the beauty and peacefulness of the woods. A human being full of hope.
Juan shared at our workshop about how he was starting to taste a future he had never imagined could happen for him. A future where his thoughtfulness and care for people could come alive…wait, that is both right and wrong, because the first part of what he began to imagine was simply living long enough to have a future or any kind.
I heard yesterday that Juan was back in jail. “The life” got him again.
(sigh, pause for tears, anger, frustration, sadness…)
These guys need a lot of help. The good news is that Youth Mentoring Connections and Homeboys Industries are organizations that I am honored to know about and spend some time with. They are doing amazing work helping these young people when they are ready to escape the life.
But, it’s a lot of work. Even when they want out, it’s hard to get out. It takes many iterations, huge, huge amounts of courage, huge hearts, and the right support to get these homeboys and homegirls to the place where it’s possible for them to imagine a future where they are alive to be in it.
On our hike, I told Juan that when I next came to LA that I'd like to go on a hike with him. Well, I am going back, but there won't be any hiking with Juan.
I am going back to go to a Youth Mentoring Connections 4-day workshop for mentors and the young people from the gangs of LA.
This is the business of saving lives and inspiring the humanity that lives inside all these young people.
YMC gives them hope. YMC does the work with the mentors and the kids.
I am grateful to be going to lend any help an Irish, German, Lithuanian white skinned now Jewish guy can. One way I can support is to invite you to help, to support me as I support them. I feel it’s our work to help them keep their program open, saving lives, giving hope.
These are good people doing good work. They are committed to opening doors to the kind of humanity that we want in our world. The kind of humanity that sees beyond skin colors, and asks, “Have you seen that dude who wants to go hiking? I’ve been looking for him.”
I am asking for a modest (or not so modest) donation today for my friend Juan and all the young people courageous enough to try to escape the life. We can make a difference in their effort to get out of gangs in LA.
My hope is to donate $500 – that is 50 people giving $10.
Donating through this website is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to support my fundraising efforts.
Many thanks for your support -- and don't forget to forward this to anyone who you think might want to donate too!
From Juan, and Richard, Ugo, Tin-Tin, Tony, Free, Jazer, Justin, and all the others, I say a deep heart felt Thank You!
If you want to know more about these young men and women or these organizations, please let me know. I'd love to share.
Playing Huge
Morgan