Alpha Youth Leadership Academy Empowers Youth for Future Success

Originally published November 14, 2014

By Laura L. Acosta

UTEP News Service

Where children live can affect their health, social and emotional well-being, as well as have a profound impact on how their lives play out in the future. For Jasmin Cordova, growing up in public housing, when her family wasn’t intermittently homeless, could have dashed her dreams for a happy and successful life.

Instead, The University of Texas at El Paso biology major started a tutoring and mentoring program for children living in the same subsidized housing community where she once lived.

The Alpha Youth Leadership Academy is a youth development initiative and research program between UTEP and the Housing Authority of the City of El Paso (HACEP) that helps children living in government subsidized housing in El Paso to become happy, healthy, engaged, and self-sufficient adults. Participants include, standing from left, Hector A. Olvera (UTEP), Maria C. Flores (HACEP), Priscilla Armenta, Salma Montes, Cynthia Escamilla, Blanca Garza, Itzel Campos, UTEP Students Alexis Vargas, Dora Holguin, Maria F. Hidalgo and Jasmin Cordova, Nancy Garcia, Karen Perez, Abril Perez, Esmeralda Garfio, Diana de la Cruz, Jonathan Argumedo and Angie Villa. Front row from left, Brian Ledesma, Josue Reyes, Ben Mathews, Sofia M. Olvera, Omar Delgado, Manuel Yañez, Brian Reyes, Christian Ledesma and Omar L. Martinez (HACEP). Photo by Laura Trejo / UTEP News Service
The Alpha Youth Leadership Academy is a youth development initiative and research program between UTEP and the Housing Authority of the City of El Paso (HACEP) that helps children living in government subsidized housing in El Paso to become happy, healthy, engaged, and self-sufficient adults. Participants include, standing from left, Hector A. Olvera (UTEP), Maria C. Flores (HACEP), Priscilla Armenta, Salma Montes, Cynthia Escamilla, Blanca Garza, Itzel Campos, UTEP Students Alexis Vargas, Dora Holguin, Maria F. Hidalgo and Jasmin Cordova, Nancy Garcia, Karen Perez, Abril Perez, Esmeralda Garfio, Diana de la Cruz, Jonathan Argumedo and Angie Villa. Front row from left, Brian Ledesma, Josue Reyes, Ben Mathews, Sofia M. Olvera, Omar Delgado, Manuel Yañez, Brian Reyes, Christian Ledesma and Omar L. Martinez (HACEP). Photo by Laura Trejo / UTEP News Service

“A lot of times people generalize that people in housing, they’re uneducated or they can’t go higher,” Cordova said. “So I just want (children in public housing) to know that they can do it. They can do whatever they want.”

This fall, Cordova is one of six UTEP research assistants in the Alpha Youth Leadership Academy (AYLA).

Developed by Hector Olvera, Ph.D., director of the Nursing and Health Center Leadership Institute at UTEP and research assistant professor at UTEP’s Center for Environmental Resource Management, AYLA is a youth development initiative and research program between The University of Texas at El Paso and the Housing Authority of the City of El Paso (HACEP) that is preparing 35 children living in government-subsidized housing in El Paso to become happy, healthy, engaged and self-sufficient adults.

“The purpose of the program is not only to help (children in public housing) plan for a better future but more than anything it is for them to be happy,” said Maria Flores, HACEP community services supervisor. “A lot of it has to do with decision-making and understanding what environment they live in and how they fit into society and how they can make decisions that will make them improve their future.”

Growing a Better Future

Now in its third year, AYLA is a skill and character development program for students in the 8th to 12th grade who reside in public housing communities across El Paso. The program’s curriculum is focused on character building, skill development and perspective broadening among the academy’s students.

Courses are taught by UTEP students studying biology, education, business, kinesiology, engineering and social work, along with UTEP faculty and HACEP instructors. Children meet every Saturday for five hours at the Kennedy Brothers Memorial Complex, where they take classes in leadership, service learning and entrepreneurship.

AYLA allows undergraduate and graduate students at UTEP to give back to the community while gaining valuable experience and insight into the health, economic and educational issues affecting people in the Paso del Norte region.

“You make the students feel important because someone took the time to say, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’” said Maria Holguin, a sophomore in UTEP’s undergraduate social work program. In addition to working at the academy, Holguin volunteers with children in orphanages and foster care. “Asking those questions empowers them to change. They realize that they are worth it and they change lives. They end up being in a better place than how you found them and I think the academy is an opportunity for all of us to help these kids do that while helping ourselves.”

UTEP students develop courses they want to teach at the academy for the spring semester. Alexis Vargas is a junior in the kinesiology program in the College of Health Sciences who plans to teach a course in how healthy lifestyles can lead to happy individuals.

“This doesn’t even feel like a job,” Vargas said. “We’re the ones that are learning. We’re walking away with us being more self-aware because we have to be aware of our flaws and what we are capable of doing or not doing, so we can tell (the academy’s students) ‘I’m not the best at everything and that’s okay. But you can be the best at whatever it is you want to be the best at.’”

It’s a Wonderful Life

This fall, UTEP students are helping the academy’s 8th graders with their production of the play, It’s a Wonderful Life, at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 12, and at 4 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 13, at the Kennedy Brothers Memorial Recreation Center. Tickets are $3.

Nancy Garcia, 14, is rehearsing for her role as Mary Hatch Bailey, wife of George Bailey, the play’s leading lady.

For Garcia, the play is an opportunity for her to gain acting experience and prepare for a future career as a director. She also wants to be a forensic scientist and a business owner.

“The academy helps me set up goals for myself,” Garcia said. “It helps me think to think deep. And it helps me set up goals for what I want.”

As the play’s producer, Dora Holguin is in charge of the background, lighting and music. Holguin plans to use her future degree in education to become an agent for change in her community.

Holguin hopes to apply the lessons she’s learned as an instructor at the academy to open a school in her native Juárez.

“It will be a school that will help students in all aspects, not just academics, so that’s why I wanted to work here,” Holguin said. “When I saw that Dr. Olvera was doing that through educational purposes, not through academic content but through other things, I thought, ‘This is what I would love to learn and be able to use it to help here and beyond.’”