Sozo Youth Sanctuary Foundation located in Grand Junction Colorado

The youth Sozo Youth Sanctuary Foundation serve are at risk of life failure. They are at risk of failing socially, emotionally, and educationally. As professional educators in the public school system for the past 20 years, we have a wealth of knowledge about young people, particularly youth at risk.

Perhaps you’ve seen the kids who wear all black…

The ones who wear astonishingly offensive t-shirts, have face piercings, look unwashed, unloved and unlovable. They are ready to run or to fight at a moment’s notice. It’s easy to look at these youth and wonder where they came from. The answer is easy; they’ve been with us all along. Pick up a newspaper and read the article about the methamphetamine lab bust where three children, ranging in age from four to ten were removed from the home; read the one about the sexual assault on the ten year old. These are frequent stories, and have been for many years. Then fast forward six to ten years, through a blur of school expulsions, parent abandonment, foster home placements or group homes, the easy numbing of self mutilation and substance abuse, early sexual activity. Same kids. Only now they look like more like societal problems themselves than the aftermath of the societal problems we read about every day. But that is exactly what they are. They have been traumatized beyond their ability to function in public settings. They cut themselves, they get high, they skip school, they hide out, and they hit the streets.

And what do they need?

You’d be surprised. The vast majority of them do not need boot camp, or corrections mentality behavioral institutions where they may learn to comply (but rarely conform) and hardly ever heal. In fact, many such interventions further destroy the fragile identity these kids have managed to hold onto, and create more damage that is only recoverable in the court system they deteriorate into, if then.

They need fresh air.
They need to let their bodies heal from traumas both suppressed and remembered, shocks to the nervous system that are never forgotten.
They need to sit by the flowing water and look at the sky.
They need to experience the unconditional love of animals, to care for things, to make things grow.
They need to have a safe place to sleep.
They need to find wholeness in stable relationships with adults who can offer what they’ve never had.
They need to find their gifts and learn to unwrap them.
They need to heal spiritually, physically, emotionally, and psychologically.
They need to detox not only from their addictions, but from a society that has polluted their spirits with pain, anger, and distrust.

If they don’t get these things, they do what makes sense to them: they gather together in the subculture that offers understanding and protection. We don’t read about those in the newspapers, but they are real, and they revolve around criminal activity, substance abuse, and violence. Kind of like the “dog-eat-dog world,” and all your friends are other dogs in a pack you call your “homies.”

If they don’t get these things, some of them literally do not make it. They become prostitutes, long-term drug addicts, and runaways. They will be the next generation of parents who will perpetuate the pain, because they have no resources to make it in the world in healthy relationships. They have never known what parenting can be. There are only a few ways that they know how to survive alone, and they all lead to victimization. Meth is a perpetration drug. That means that for every meth-involved family, for every cooker and dealer, there are multiple casualties – many of them young.

Sozo Youth Sanctuary Foundation’s goal is to bring holistic healing to traumatized youth, regardless of their ability to pay.

A self-sustaining foundation can provide the financial stability and longevity to create a prototype for child and adolescent care that is beyond the scope of anything contemporary treatment facilities offer in these times – because these are truly different times, and the youth that are coming out of the methamphetamine culture are far more damaged than most understand.

We bring practical and appropriate therapeutic and psychosocial opportunities to traumatized children and adolescents who have no other funding.

These interventions may include innovative approaches to re-engagement as well as clinical interventions. At this time, provided services are approved on a case by case basis by the directors and are arranged through individuals serving as private contractors. They have historically and may yet include: positive, supervised, athletic or creative growth activities such as Little League fees and pottery classes; trauma-informed therapy; art therapy; bodywork and massage therapy; medical attention not covered by insurance or Medicaid; equine therapy, hypnotherapy and other modalities shown through research to be successful with trauma.

Through referrals made to our foundation by educational, law enforcement, private and other entities, our directors assess the needs of referred youth who qualify on an individual basis and make available through contracted services appropriate psychosocial and/or therapeutic interventions at no cost to the recipient. Referrals will be screened as to their applicability for other types of payment to insure that duplication of services does not occur or that the needs cannot be met through other means.