A small group of volunteers are using a home on the west side of town to feed, house and help homeless youth in central Phoenix.
StandUp for Kids is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with 40 chapters across the nation. It was founded in San Diego in 1990, and the Phoenix chapter was established in 1992.
About five years ago, the Phoenix StandUp for Kids team found its current home on the corner of Seventh Avenue and McKinley Street.
The youth home provides a safe shelter for youth on Saturdays and Sundays from 4:30 to 7 p.m. At the house, youth can get a hot meal, shower, wash their clothes and get new clothes from the donated items at the house. StandUp for Kids also provides Wi-Fi and computers so they can check email, apply for jobs and keep up on social networking.
The drop-in center provides outreach services to homeless youth ages 24 and under.
The age designation of 24 and under is not random. Co-executive director Dean Palmer explained that the female brain will reach maturity at about 22 years of age, and the male brain will reach that point at about 24 years.
Additionally, the StandUp for Kids team can be found every Thursday handing out food and hygiene-care packages to homeless youth on the streets of Phoenix. The packages include snack crackers, granola bars and water.
“We can work with these kids before they have habits — good or bad — permanently made,” Palmer said. “We don’t really want to foster an idea of dependency as much as self-sufficiency. What we’re trying to do is not really feed the strays, as the police like to put it, but we’re trying to break the cycle.”
Homeless youth are the most difficult subpopulation of homelessness to count, according to the Department of Economic Security’s Homelessness in Arizona 2012 Annual Report. The same report noted that metropolitan areas account for 85 percent of all homelessness in Arizona.
Maricopa County represents 58 percent of Arizona’s homeless population. According to the Tumbleweed Center for Youth Development, an organization that helps homeless and disadvantaged youth, an estimated 1,780 youth are on their own and homeless each day.
The modest-sized house hosts between 25 and 40 youth per day. The house is divided into multiple small rooms, most of which are filled with donated furniture, clothes and food items. When the house is full, every seat is occupied, and some youth take their meals outside to eat on the porch.
“We would serve more if we had a bigger facility,” said Anna Diaz, the co-executive director of StandUp for Kids. “My wish would be to find a warehouselike facility. It would afford us to have more furniture space, more recreational space, but most importantly more safety.”
StandUp for Kids has been offered items such as a full-size pool table, a ping-pong table and even a commercial air-hockey table. Diaz had to turn them down, though, because of a lack of space.
Diaz also said that she would love to have a bathtub or more showers. She recalled having two kids on the verge of heat exhaustion over the summer who she could have helped much more if the house had a tub to cool them down. The house also has limited racks and space for clothes, so many of the donated items are stored in boxes.
In the winter, Diaz and Palmer often get to the house early to begin to warm it up. With no central heating, they turn on the oven and use space heaters to keep the youth warm.
“Our operating budget is about $28,000 a year, which is probably the smallest operating budget for any nonprofit you’ll find that does as much as we do,” Diaz said. “All of our money comes from private donations. We’re not faith-based, and we’re not getting federal or government grant money.”
There are many StandUp for Kids chapters across the nation. The Phoenix chapter, though, is considerably lower-profile than many other chapters and is the only chapter in the nation that pays its own rent.
“We are not in every state because not every state has the problem we have,” Palmer said. “Some states take adequate care of their elderly, disabled and their children. Arizona has a track record of not doing that.”
Anna Diaz
co-executive director of StandUp for Kids
Diaz became involved with StandUp for Kids after realizing that homeless or disadvantaged youth were a demographic that she knew very little about. She and Palmer are the third executive directors of the Phoenix chapter. When they first arrived to help at StandUp for Kids, the house was a bit chaotic, Diaz said.
“There were kids running around everywhere, and some of the leaders seemed overwhelmed,” she said. “The organizational side of me knew I could help.”
Diaz and Palmer had run neither a nonprofit nor a business before. After sudden leadership changes, though, they were faced with a decision — they would need to step up as directors of the organization or the chapter would be closed.
“It wasn’t until we really started exploring it that we realized a lot more about running a nonprofit,” Diaz said. “No one at StandUp for Kids is paid except three people at the top national office. Everyone else is purely volunteer.”
When Diaz and Palmer first took over in July, they inherited a van with expired tags, 14-year-old tires and a mountain of paperwork and insurance details to sort through.
“The more I realized needed to be done, the more passionate I became about getting involved and really being more proactive than I ever thought I could be or would be,” Diaz said.
Diaz and Palmer said the largest obstacle to achieving their goals is funding. They are also in need of volunteers interested in spending quality time with the youth at the home.
“I firmly believe that if these kids had somebody who gave even a micro-care, they wouldn’t be on the street,” Diaz said. “They’re brilliant people. They’re artistic and creative and funny kids. They are loving and charming; they will give your heart a run for its money. But they’re so wounded and so hurt by life experiences up to this point that they’re very guarded. They’re survivors.”
Diaz recalled one youth in particular who drew attention to the difference between volunteering motives, and why this increases StandUp for Kids’ success.
“Everyone else in their world is either paid to help them, tolerate them or like them, or they abandon them,” Diaz said. “Here, you have volunteers who are here because we want to be here, not because we’re getting paid to be here or because we have to serve social time.”
Diaz said the center looks for volunteers with parental personalities who want to connect with the youth. Vince Buczkowski, a volunteer at StandUp for Kids, spends his weekend evenings making connections with the youth at the house. He plays football and listens to them.
“I don’t know how much I really do here,” Buzckowski said. “I come down here, I hang out with the kids, I talk to them, maybe play some ball or something. I’m probably more of just a friend to these kids than anything else. Sometimes maybe that’s what they need the most.”
The team at StandUp for Kids believes that caring makes all the difference. Listening to the youth as they may have never been listened to before produces change and growth.
“Once they start having people listen to them, they’re going to realize that they’re truly a viable person and not just an invisible human out there.”
StandUp for Kids is currently asking for blankets for its blanket drive as well as items including sweaters, scarves, hats and gloves.
“There are a lot of good kids here who really just need a hand,” Buczkowski said. “They need a friend. This is a small but great way to really make the world a better place.”
Contact the reporter at Lindsay.Robinson@asu.edu
