Educate Tomorrow

I guess it was in November 2005 that the Miami Herald published a special section on Philanthropy and highlighted a number of charities in South Florida. I read about one called Educate Tomorrow (ET) and was moved to donate to support them. Their local program helps foster kids who are between 15 and 23 and will age out of foster care and are eligible for certain programs if they stay in school, even after they turn 18 and become independent.

ET assigns these kids mentors that work with them to learn life skills, set and meet goals, apply to colleges and vocational schools and generally, to make it after leaving the foster care system. I've donated money to them each year since learning about them. Finally, I went this week to a training session to become a mentor. Once the background check is complete, I will attend some events to mingle with mentees and see if there is someone I click with to mentor.

I feel for the kids in foster care, with really no one to turn to for help and support, and no one to teach them how to become responsible adults. That's not to say that many don't do just that on their own, but they do have a handicap without consistency in their lives much of the time. I don't know how I would have done without a plan and a little help at 18. I had jobs and saved money, but my Mom and Dad saved their money during my entire childhood to send me and Ricardo to college. I always knew I was going. I could be independent, and relish that independence, because I was not worried every moment, or tempted every moment, and because I had role models, however imperfect.

At the mentor training I learned that there are over 518,000 kids in foster care in the US. 35,000 of them are in Florida, 5000 in Miami-Dade county, and 1500 of those in the 15-23 year old age range. Thanks to ET, the kids in Miami-Dade know that they are eligible for the Road to Independence program which offers free tuition in Florida public colleges, universities and vocational schools. They need the grades and to get accepted, but they can not only go for free, but they can get a monthly stipend until they are 23 as long as they are in school.

That's where the mentors come in, to help encourage them and work with them to apply themselves in high school, to take SAT, ACT, and other entrance exam tests, to fill out college applications and financial aid applications, and to apply themselves and avoid distractions and get their education.

This will help them from being part of the:

55% who do not graduate high school (after leaving their foster homes at age 18 - and before graduation)
51% who are unemployed at age 22
42% who are homeless within 12 months of aging out of foster care at 18
40% on welfare
25% who end up involved with the Juvenile Justice system
69% of females who give birth within 4 years of turning 18 and aging out

Cell blocks are full of inmates who were once in foster care.

It seems like such a smart thing, to keep the kids from falling away from becoming a productive member of society and to give them the leg up they need to achieve goals. It's the kind of charity I like to contribute toward: one that enables the recipient.

Kids who have been disappointed by people and the system their whole lives might take some time to trust and respond, but it seems like a good thing, to mentor them and help them learn how to build a real life. I hope the process moves quickly and I can get assigned someone soon. I hope I'm up to the challenge and can do some good. I won't be the coolest mentor a kid can have, but hopefully I can make a difference in their life and make sure they have a bright future.

www.educatetomorrow.org

Teen Angst

In joining Facebook, having a High School Reunion, and reconnecting with classmates I haven't really known in a long time - if ever - I find myself thinking about being 13 again.

I moved back to Oak Park, Michigan when I was 12 and about the start Junior High. I stayed in Oak Park through High School graduation, making it more "where I'm from" than any of the places I've lived as a child (Sao Paulo, Brazil; Yonkers, New York; Oak Park from age 3-7; Gainesville, Florida; Tuscaloosa and Hunstville, Alabama; and then Oak Park again from age 12-18). I don't know if you recall, but 7th grade is a terrible time for kids. It was hard being the new kid. My own situation was that I had parents who were not very involved or understanding about things in my world. I had stopped even trying to tell them way before I hit 7th grade, so they were not where I turned to handle teenage or childhood angst. Mostly, I wrote, cried to myself, and went to school any way.

I know those days scarred me. Not just 7th grade, but the years before that of being the new kids, and after that of not really being accepted. I used to think about this quite a bit, and finally got over it, even if I know it colors how I deal with people even today. It's really all you can do - just get over it. Otherwise, you let it keep hurting your present and future, and not just the past. Although Facebook has made this rise to the top again, I want to put it to bed again and move on. I'm not that 13 year old self any more. Even at 13, I wasn't the person others saw. My inner self was too strong to be picked on and didn't deserve it any way.

The funny thing about reminiscing on Facebook in public or private messages is that it seems everyone - almost without exception - seemed to have had their own demons to face. Whether it was problems at home or something else, there seems to have been a lot of lack of awareness of others and either aggressive behaviour to cover it up, or some other facade. We all seem to have felt terribly alone and lonely, even those who were "popular".

I always knew the ones who picked on me and belittled me were covering up for their own insecurity, but even I did not realize how true that was.

It makes me want to reach out to all of my pre-teen and teen friends and tell them to look with empathy on each other, to be kind, to recognize what they have and not just what they might lack. I want to tell them to support their friends, and their brothers and sisters, to stand up for each other and love unconditionally, and to tell those they love that they do so. Do you think they'll listen?

25 Things?

On Facebook recently, there has been a chain letter of sorts floating around. "Notes" can be written and added to you Facebook profile. The chain is to write a note with 25 Random Things about you, and then tag 25 Facebook friends on the note. By tagging them, they see your note, and are, in turn, asked to post their own 25 things. You tag the person who tagged you so that they can know you've posted your note. I am enjoying this tremendously.

I was tagged fairly early in this process, and wrote my note quickly, without taking the time to post the most important or interesting things, just the first things that came to mind. In retrospect, this might not have been the greatest idea. I posted one thing that was unintentionally controversial, and it caught someone's attention as having a negative connotation. This is what I wrote about in my last blog entry. I decided not to go back and edit the 25 things to remove that item, but I wish I'd kept that one to myself.

In reading everyone's 25 things, I have learned a lot about people. It's been especially fun to read the things from people I have not seen since High School, and who I may not have known well even back then. In writing my own, I realized I could come up with far more than 25 random things. If I were writing it now, I'd probably do better. In light of that, I'll add some more "things", although I'm not sure if I have 25 or not. I'll make these different from the first 25 - you'll have to look at my Facebook profile to see those.

1. Before age 18 I lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Yonkers, New York; Oak Park, Michigan; Gainesville, Florida; Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Huntsville, Alabama; and then back to Oak Park.
2. After age 18 I lived in East Lansing, Michigan; Evansville, Indiana; Ann Arbor, Michigan and Doral (Miami), Florida.
3. I've been a scuba diver since 1986.
4. I became a scuba instructor in 1989, and retired from active instruction in 2007.
5. I've dived all 5 Great Lakes.
6. I have been an active cave diver and technical diver, but have not done either in quite some time.
7. I've been to North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. I also dived in Egyptian waters, near the Israel/Egypt border, so I can claim being in Africa, but really, it doesn't count.
8. I speak French, and am beginning to understand Spanish, but consider myself a beginner and I can't get a sentence out in Spanish without only being able to think of the French words.
9. My beloved dog, J.D. (Janet's Dog) died and a few months before my Mother passed away suddenly in 1993. It was a bad year.
10. I love reading, puzzles, photography, and, of course, scuba diving. I take underwater photos too, but I am still using film for that with my trusty Nikonos V.
11. I like to cook, but typically only do it when I am having guests over. I like having the leftovers for meals during the following week. I'm a decent cook.
12. None of my relatives lived near us when I was growing up. My paternal grandparents both died before my parents met. My maternal grandparents, uncle (and aunt) and two cousins lived in Sao Paulo. My other uncle (and aunt) and cousins lived in New York, but we were not close until more recent years.
13. I've visited Brazil twice, when I was 7 and again when I was 11. I've been to Israel (Dad's birthplace) once, when I was 26.
14. The first Sitchin born in the US was my nephew Eli, closely followed by his brother Wyatt.
15. It you meet another Sitchin, they are doubtless a relative.
16. My parents were related by marriage when they met (and that's how they met). There is Sitchin family in Brazil (Sao Paulo only, I think).
17. Both of my Grandfathers were from the same town in Ukraine (Golovanevsk). My maternal grandmother was from Romania and my paternal grandmother was from Baku (now Azerbaijan, then Russia).
18. When I became a naturalized citizen (at age 7), we changed the spelling of our name from Sitshin to Sitchin. Coming from Hebrew and Cyrillic (Russian) alphabets, it is still an approximation of the sounds.
19. Before I got interested in computers, I thought I'd be a writer some day. I don't write much any more, but I have had some scuba articles and photos published.
20. I had a creative writing scholarship to Michigan State University. It was small and basically paid for the English class (usually creative writing) I took each term.
21. I'm lucky to have quite a few close friends - one's I can count on and who can count on me.
22. I miss my friends from Michigan, but I still manage to see them when we travel together to dive destinations.
23. I believe you see in others what you are looking for, and that if you look for good, you will find it. Conversely if you look for faults, you'll find that too.
24. I believe people accuse others of the things they themselves are guilty. (A jealous ex-boyfriend led me to that one.)
25. Being alone is better than being in the wrong company.
26. My uncle from New York is the author of more than 10 books, in countless languages now, on Ancient Civilizations. I go to most of his seminars when he gives them, but wished I had been closer to everything when he was also traveling with groups to various sites and museums. It is fascinating, whether you buy his theories or not.
27. I maintain websites for my own site (where I learned how to build one) with scuba photos (home.comcast.net/~janetsitchin/index.html), in part maintain my uncle's site (http://www.sitchin.com/), and for two dive clubs, the one in Michigan and a national one that is a SIG (special interest group) of another social organization. Fortunately none take a lot of time. I've gotten lazy with my own and generally post photos to flickr now instead of the web site.

I think that's all for now. Again, I did not go off and ponder for days on these things. Some are things I've thought about over the last few days, others I just thought about as I wrote. I think none are controversial this time. Although that controversial one did open a dialog, and helped me to begin getting to know an old acquaintance again, so it wasn't all bad.