When a community is disrupted—by current events, civic unrest, or violence—we rely on places and people who make us feel comfortable and cared for. At Hope, for eight teenagers, Young Men’s Group (YMG) is that. By definition, YMG offers cohort-based programming for young men focusing on leadership development and learning and exploring creative technology skills. In reality, YMG is this and so much more.
Facilitator Angel Sandro has deep experience in youth work and shows up to YMG as more than just a facilitator. He’s a navigator, a buddy, an advisor, and an educator. “I build brotherly community with the young men,” Angel describes. The activities that the young men do together are all dual purpose, both enriching their skills and feeding their minds.
Angel says, “Really, it’s about entrepreneurship, developing a skill in the tech center, but also just hanging out, just having a good time, expressing yourself, hanging out with your brothers. In the course of the years, I’ve introduced them to DJing, podcasting, branding, a little bit coding.” This intentional combination of hard skills and soft skills creates a space where, in times of both calm and distress, the young men can come together and just be.
Angel takes an expressly nonjudgmental approach to building relationships with these young men. “I let them be who they are,” he says. For Angel, the goal is primarily for each young person to find out more about himself. In the process, relationships are built, friendships bloom, and communication rises to the top.
Part of what makes Angel a good leader is how he embodies the experience that these young men are having. He describes keeping up with the lingo, the language of Gen Z, as a way to communicate respect for their style of speaking and to show he understands them when they talk.
During the recent ICE incursion in Minnesota, Angel knew that showing up was the best thing he could do for these young men. He says, “they needed a space to continue to have conversations. I’d just open the floor and ask, how are you feeling about this, what are you seeing in the community?” He adds, “I wanted to give them space to have conversations with each other, and I wanted to seewhat their thinking was—what are they seeing in the community, instead of just hearing it from the media. What’s really going on? How are you really feeling? How are you looking out for each other?”
Angel noticed that at a scary time, when ICE was extremely active, the young men’s resilience was fuel for his own. “All eight of them would come. For me it was a surprise, and I thought that was beautiful,” Angel says.