Say Yess to at-risk youth

Just because I'm Mexican doesn't mean I'm poor It doesn't mean I have an accent And it doesn't mean I dress ugly Just because I'm Mexican doesn't mean my family lives in the streets and I don't have beggars at my door. Just because I'm Mexican doesn't mean I'm dirty, and it doesn't mean my parents are divorced. Just because I'm Mexican why would anyone care. What's the difference - What's life without Mexicans

- Vanessa Ribota

Vanessa Ribota is a sixth-grader at Greenlee K-8 School. She has long, black hair, a shy smile, a dog named Coca and the desire to become a veterinarian someday. She also has a mentor, CSU sophomore Nicole Nowak, and the two meet once a week in a program created by the Yess Institute, a local nonprofit organization that wants to help Vanessa and other children from disadvantaged backgrounds reach their full potential.

On a recent Monday afternoon, Vanessa and several other Greenlee students and mentors gather in a classroom on the second floor. A jar of lollipops makes its way around the room as the children talk about what they did over the weekend. Eventually program specialist Alex Russell lifts one arm into the air, her signal to the children that it's time to pay attention. The day's activity: rehearsing a dance routine the students will perform on the Auraria Campus on Thursday, May 3, to kick off a Cinco de Mayo celebration. The energy level is high, but eventually everyone is lined up and ready to head to the auditorium. Taking the stage, the students show off their best moves, accompanied by a thumping bass line and a flurry of giggles and horseplay.

It's a cultural melting pot, but the students take no notice. Nobody cares about the color of your skin, the main question is: Can you dance? Unfortunately, the rest of the world is not always so welcoming. There are some who don't see Vanessa as she is - a young girl with a passion for soccer and telenovelas and hanging out with her friends. They only see an outsider, and that hostility is the inspiration for her poem, "Just Because." "Once in a while people will start treating me different because I'm Mexican," she says. "Like, make me an individual, so I'm not part of a group or something."

There are times when just trying to have fun becomes overly complicated. "One time I was at the park with my friends and some people - I don't know who they were - some people just walked up to us and started making fun of us, threatening to jump us and everything, because we were Mexicans."

If you ask her why people behave this way, she'll shrug her shoulders. "Because they don't have anything else to do but pick on other people of different race," she offers. "Maybe they've been picked on, too."

That's a rather mature outlook for an 11-year-old, one that can probably be traced to her regular sessions with Nowak, her mentor. Nowak, who's majoring in psychology with a concentration in pre-law, gladly endures the one-hour commute in order to meet with Vanessa on Mondays. "I have a passion for children," she says. "I've been around children my entire life and I've always wanted to work with them. It almost breaks my heart to see the underprivileged…not have the same opportunities that I did and my brothers did. Even though it's not going to globally make a change, at least if it makes one life [better], that's all that matters for me."

The Yess Institute currently has four programs operating in Denver County and Jefferson County schools. Executive Director Carlo Kriekels, a native of Belgium who co-founded the organization in 2001, felt compelled to enter the nonprofit arena after an extended trip that took him through remote areas of South America. "I made a trip on a motorbike from California to Chile after college, and that really changed my life," Kriekels says.

"It's kind of where I woke up and where I saw that there's much more to the perspective to life than the perspective that I had growing up in the small village in Belgium where I grew up," Kriekels explains. "What it also taught me is that I care about kids, and I didn't really know that. I volunteered in a shelter for street children in Columbia, and I truly enjoyed that. So when I came back from South America I really wanted to do something with kids but I didn't know what it was. And so here I was on this career path where I could work in the family business or I could become a lawyer. But on the other hand, after the trip, it had no value anymore, there was other value in life. I felt like I had to do something different with my life, this was not the path that I was supposed to go [down] - to be a lawyer."

Luckily for Vanessa and hundreds of children in the Denver area, Kriekels turned his back on corporate life and embarked on a mission to empower at-risk youth. Kriekels attended courses at the Self Mastery University, and used its principles of emotional intelligence to create the template for the Yess Institute. (Yess stands for youth empowerment support services.)

The boys and girls enrolled in the Yess Institute's various programs may be unaware of the circuitous path that brought Kriekels to them; they just know they're having a great time and getting the support they crave. "It's a fun opportunity that kids should always have," Vanessa says. "Like, Nicole, with me, when I have a problem or something, she wants to know - and I tell her. She can help me out. I'm pretty sure she's been through some of the things I've been through."

Greenlee K-8 Yess Institute students will kick off the Cinco de Mayo Celebration with a dance performance at the Auraria Campus flagpole at 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 3. The free event runs until 3 p.m. For more information on the Yess Institute and mentoring opportunities visit www.yessinstitute.org.