IMPACTruth is an organization that is empowering youth across the region through storytelling and education. KVCR's Joel Morales has more.
Joel Morales:
To begin, can you give us a little background about yourself?
Roy Juarez:
Absolutely. I'm originally from San Antonio, Texas, but I've been living my life, traveling the country, and trying to inspire youth to never give up on life their dreams, and understand the value of higher education.
Joel Morales:
Can you tell us a little of your organization?
Roy Juarez:
Our company name is IMPACTruth. It's our two core values. We want to create impact and do it in truth and truth in the way we do our business, handling the information that we put out there. All of this stems from my growing up as a homeless youth. I first came home at the age of 14 with my nine year old sister and two year old brother, due to domestic violence, and I ended up living out of a backpack for two and a half years because I could never find a home for myself. I found one for my younger siblings, but what I learned on the street is what I apply in my company.
I want to inspire kids to not give up. And in the process of that, during the pandemic, I came across this article that said Latino, African American and other youth make up less than 7% of children's book authors every year. And I thought to myself, You know what? I can change that statistic because I felt that it was important that kids saw themselves in literature. They saw themselves in children's books. And so I approached a friend of mine from Ontario, Montclair School District. It's Jesse Armitu, and I said, Jesse, I said, I have a crazy idea. Would you be interested in hearing it? So she said, tell me what it is, Roy.
So I said, I want to create a children's book, and I want to help children become authors. So we started our first book with about 30 youth, and they created classes in session respect, and from there, grew this movement to try to help, specifically minority youth to become children's book authors.
Joel Morales:
And that's the link to San Bernardino County?
Roy Juarez:
Yes, actually. So I'm currently working with eight different schools in San Bernardino County, and they're the community day school students. So they these students know what struggle is. And so in our youth program, we have a program called impact youth leadership program, which our kids go through 12 different modules, and they learn all about social, emotional learning. They learn about respect, they learn about self love. And so in this program, I asked super Assistant Superintendent Myrlene Pierre if she would be interested in having our students become published authors. And she absolutely loved the idea.
So our kids get together, they write a book together based on one topic, and from that topic, we created an entire book that our kids can now turn around and take their book and go into the communities, go into elementary schools to teach that topic.
So for example, some of the ones that we have while respect, we have gratitude, we have forgiveness, we have hope. And so these books are just really getting out into the community. We've had reports of family members at churches testified about how their child is now a published author. And the thing that I love about literature to life is especially with my kids that I work with closely. A lot of times, society has already written them off, like these kids aren't going to make it. These kids are a statistic, but we're giving them a tool to help them take a step forward.
I just received the other day a message from one of our student authors on social media, and I will be honest, it was rather late. It was about 11pm and he says, Roy, are you there? And I replied, I said, yes, mijo. I said, How are you doing? He says, I'm not doing so well. He said, so I thought I would reach out to you. He goes, I just, I just don't feel like, like I'm making it, that I'm not making the right decisions. And so we were able to talk through that, that text message, through the social media platform. And I said, and let me remind you, mijo, that you're also a published author. And there's many people who in their life say that they want to be one, and they're not, and you are. And even just that little bit of a push of using that, he was like, You know what, sir, you're right. I never even thought about that. He goes, I am a published author. He goes, You know what, sir, thank you so much. I think I got it from here. And he was, I'll be at school tomorrow. I said, good, don't miss school. Keep going. Mijo, you're almost you're almost done. Keep pushing through.
Joel Morales:
Yeah, that's really positive feedback. That's really says something about the program.
Roy Juarez:
Well, for some of our kids, this is their second year in the program, so this is their second children's book home. And the beautiful thing about this book is we don't own it. They own it. So we just helped create it for them. But the reason we did that was because we wanted our kids to be able to take their book, sell them and make some money for their family as well. They own 100%
of the book. What is the age range for students? It's going to be anywhere from middle school went up. And how do students get selected to participate? They are all welcome to participate.
Joel Morales:
And how do students that aren't a part of those schools, how can they become a part of the program?
Roy Juarez:
The school or district or county has to bring the program to their school.
Joel Morales:
How do they get in contact with your program to bring this together so that you can all work together?
Roy Juarez:
They can actually reach us at impacttruth.com, there'll be two t's in the middle. Or they can reach us at our office, 702-445-3754, and we can get that process started.
Joel Morales:
Roy, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for having me.
On May 5th, IMPACTruth, in collaboration with the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, host Beyond the Books, a live event where students present their published works...taking place at the Dorothy Ingham Learning Center in San Bernardino. More at impacttruth.com