Guide for Youth

Friends for All Street Teens (Part 1)

"Helping Teens Who Need It Most"

Three years ago, Cecilia, age 20, developed the nation's first teen-operated organization that is fighting to stop teen and family homelessness, and increasing awareness of homelessness and extreme poverty.

"Statistics tell us that every night hundreds of teens are on the street; that both sexual and physical abuse of these young people is at alarming rates; that substance abuse is rising among homeless youth. Who is responsible? I say we are.”

"When I got involved with an organization in town that fights poverty, we worked on the remedial part of the problem of homelessness.  The idea was floating around to have a preventive aspect of homelessness, because this is the sort of thing that if you could prevent, it would really reduce so much grief.  So I took the initiative and started this organization called Friends for All Street Teens, or F.A.S.T.  It's like a haven for teens to get together while we're trying to help others and help ourselves."  

CECILIA'S PROFILE 

What makes a successful community leader?

From personal experience, you have to be willing to accept personal failure and to put your ego down. You learn so many things you don't know and sometimes you'll just feel like you're at the bottom and feel like, "I don't know anything!"

What's your dream?

I want to make social change by establishing a home for teens who don't have a family, or who are just on the run.

How do you create lasting, positive change?

We aim to have an impact on the future and there's nothing better to do than to make it be an organization with an infrastructure that will be there while you're gone. I think you need to make sure that whatever it is you're trying to do outlasts you and the only thing to do is to build the infrastructure. You may not have all the glories of seeing the impact while you're there, but you have to make sure the groundwork is there so that while you're gone, other people can work on it.