Spending the holidays at Phoenix House can be especially tough for a teenager. Our youth will be missing out on their family celebrations, and will no doubt miss the fun of opening gifts with their loved ones. The Committee provides wrapped presents, including clothing, toiletries, recreational activities and sporting equipment each Christmas for our teens. This year, the Committee will be shopping for nearly 400 students, and with your donations we will be able to provide gifts for all of these deserving kids.

Donations to the Holiday Gift Drive can be made by clicking here, or items can be dropped off at Phoenix House at 164 W. 74th Street New York NY 10023  (attn: Jessica Henges).

For more information on the Youth Services Committee and the holiday gift drive, please contact Shauna Ross at sross@phoenixhouse.org

Student at the Phoenix House Academy of Los Angeles

When they were standing up there on the stage at the Gene Autry Center in their neat khakis and polo shirts, our young clients from the Phoenix House Academy of Los Angeles looked like what they were that day—champion debaters.

But the truth is that every one of them is so much more.

One client started using crystal meth and stealing cars when he was fourteen; another was smoking weed and hadn’t gone to school for a year.  Another was living with his alcoholic father who beat him so badly the neighbors finally called the police. By that point, he had been drinking and taking ecstasy for a year. His grades were “pure F’s,” as he put it. For him, the future didn’t exist–until he found the Phoenix House Academy of Los Angeles.

If you’d told any one of these teens when they first walked in the Academy doors that within a few short months, they would be addressing a full-capacity crowd at a major Los Angeles cultural institution, arguing the pros and cons of cloning and its social and medical implications, they probably would have laughed–or cried. If you’d told them they would win the championship, they wouldn’t have believed you.

But on Friday, June 24, 2011, that is exactly what they did. Not that it happened overnight; every one of them first had to decide to join the debate team—in other words, redefine profoundly who they were. No longer were they the kids who skipped school and got “pure F’s.”

They were now the ones doing the extra work, reading, studying, learning both sides of a complicated argument. And it wasn’t only academic skills that came into play here; they had to prove themselves creative as well. When it came to their powerpoint presentation, they wrote a rap song—“To get information/To the whole nation!”—and ended up carrying the day.

They were stars up there, and the Phoenix House Academy was both proud and thrilled for them.  In the words of Board member Geoffrey Nathanson, “These kids have a shot!”

The interview was published by SportsDayDFW (powered by the Dallas Morning News) on March 21, 2011.

What has occupied your time primarily for the last couple of years?

Well, just a couple of things. I didn’t want things to end at Kentucky but it did, but I think life is about 10-percent what happens to us and 90-percent how we handle it. I think I’ve handled it very well. I definitely didn’t want that to happen, but I used it as a blessing because my mother passed away January 7 and I’ve missed her several times and this year I was able to spend the last two years of my life with her, and I wouldn’t trade that for any trophy.

And then the other things I’ve been involved with is I’ve done a ton of volunteer stuff that I never had time to do before and it’s so rewarding to me as a person; I was involved with Mothers Against Drunk Driving; I was involved with Boys and Girls Club; Big Brothers, Big Sisters; Phoenix House and those kinds of things. I might continue to be involved with all those kinds of things because it gave me a great deal of satisfaction. I think I was able to give them some help as well, so you never know what blessing is going to be given to us at any particular time. Sometimes, it might look like it’s a setback but really it could be a blessing in disguise and you just have to use it to that effect.

Read the whole interview here.