STREET FRATERNITY

The goal of three fraternity as an organization is to be a place of Brotherhood and personal growth for urban young men 14 to 25 year olds our mission here is as stated Brotherhood and personal growth and with that for us what’s most important is consistently be available to young men and by

Consistently being available as having positive male role models in their lives now in these neighborhoods there’s many families from all around the world that have integrated or came here as refugees so majority of our participants are former refugee young men and former immigrants and they are coming anywhere

From Southeast Asia across Africa from East Africa to West Africa Central Africa a handful also from the Middle East and then there are others from Central America and South America so that’s the 95 percent population I could say and that other 5% is other young men who may be friends with them or

Word-of-mouth they hear about streep paternity and they’re coming out from different neighborhoods around the Denver metro area I think what’s most important as Street fraternity is being able to listen to the wants and needs of young men and that’s where our success has been is by consistently opening our

Doors and the hours that were open so that’s the specialty of Street fraternity and what makes us unique and that relates to our short term goals and long term goals the young men are really the ones that are gonna make this place happen whatever is it’s something that I love even the most

Is you know the connection we establish when we are in this basement is it’s it’s amazing how many people you know we get introduced to on the daily basis once you step in here you’re one of us you know so that inclusiveness actually it’s one of the backbone of this place

We’ll never look down on anybody and we also always make sure nobody is you know nobody feels left out we created ourselves with the intent of attracting violent young men and so everything that we do here is with that understanding that violence might be a big part of our

Young men’s lives now I would say that mostly young people that come here violence is not the main issue in their life but the fact that they live in this area violence is an issue and for many of our guys violence has been an issue in their past or with their families

Past and so the people who come here the young people who come here and the adult volunteers and the adult staff are people who are naturally comfortable within a more risky environment and really enjoy being in that risky environment without without being hopefully too naive you know we attract

Young men who are a little bit more street oriented or maybe in school but on the edge of being in school or already maybe have dropped out and thinking about going back our guys are just a little bit more on the edge and a little bit more relevant I think to the

Streets then say some of the young men that you might meet in a you know high-performing high school the key issue for this place to be safe and to be relevant is respect our guys are creating their own understanding in this Brotherhood of respect is both inside

And outside this building we can make a difference with our young men we create Brotherhood’s not just here but maybe other places I’m interested to see if if there’s another country maybe one of the countries were one of our guys were from I just started talking with them about

I’m going to volunteer somewhere next year and I would love to go volunteer maybe in a camp that they may have come from and so we’re talking about that right now and I’m asking them could the street fraternity work where you live where you grew up and so far they’ve all

Said yes but for me I’m interested in seeing and we may be looked at helping with Brotherhood’s in other countries in places where our young men come from you

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