Julio Flores keeps an old photo of himself at 15 years old in which he’s flashing a hand gesture while wearing aviator-style glasses and a mess of hair that even Mick Jagger would envy.
Next to the photo, he has a recent picture of himself in a nice black suit at a Boys & Girls Club event. Flores is the site director of the Boys & Girls Clubs’ Cope branch at West Eighth Avenue and Inca Street in west Denver.
He shows the photos to kids so they can see that they can change their lives for the better in spite of what others may think or what they may think of themselves. Flores hopes to have the same impact on his kids that his club mentors had on him.
Flores grew up in Denver in the 1980s after coming with his family to the United States from Puerto Rico when he was 8. The son of a single mom, Flores became a father when he was 15. He had another child at 17.
He could have dropped out of school, but instead he found acceptance and mentors at his local Boys & Girls Club.
Flores’ branch is one of 17 clubs spread across the metro Denver area. Established in 1961, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver provides a fun and educational place for kids, ages 6-18, to hang out after school and during the summer. Through a variety of programs, the club emphasizes academic achievement, leadership development, and the cultivation of healthy habits and lifestyle choices.
For just $2 a year, kids can go to the club, enjoy a meal, and socialize through sports, games and other activities.
Boys & Girls Clubs includes a variety of programs to help kids succeed, including the Accelerated Reading program — which asks kids to read 75 books a year. Also, mentors build relationships with children on an individual basis in order to motivate them to succeed.
Preparing this generation of children to be competitive in a global workforce is a task of the utmost importance to Boys & Girls Clubs CEO John Barry.
“They’re not going to compete for jobs in Denver or Colorado or even the United States. They truly are going to be the first generation that competes globally, and we have to be able to give them every advantage we possibly can,” Barry said.
Believing in the kids is one way to give them an advantage. One thing that frustrates Flores is how parents will ask the club to fix their kids, some of whom they deem “broken.”
“We have too many of our parents coming in here and handing their kids over to us and telling us that their kid’s broken. And they’re not broken — they just haven’t been taught . They haven’t had a chance to learn in the proper way,” he said.
Flores told the story of his son, who was a great athlete but struggled with reading. Channeling his son’s competitive nature, Flores started a contest between his son and his friends to see who could read the most. Flores’ son soon started reading everything, sounding out words on signs and billboards. He fell in love with reading so much that in sixth grade, he was reading at a ninth-grade level.
The efforts of Flores and others give club members such as Isaiah, a 16-year-old at the Cope branch, confidence about the future. Isaiah hopes to get into sports management after college. At first, the club was just a place for him to go to when his parents had to work late, but it quickly became a place where he could make good friends.
“You meet somebody new every day,” he said, “and make lifelong friends.”
Hugh Johnson: 303-954-1037, hjohnson@denverpost.com or twitter.com/HughJohnsonDP
