Outside a building bathed in colorful graffiti along Southeast 122nd Avenue in Portland’s Mill Park neighborhood, several young men sporting tattoos, high top sneakers and tracksuits give it up for 20-year-old Bruno Dunham.
The group, each from Ascending Flow’s mentoring program, shoot video of Dunham as he walks down the street, singing an original song he wrote about his past:
“I gave you everything/ You treated me like trash/ Don’t want to be with you/ Can’t take my pain anymore…”
“Tell ‘em, bro,” Dunham’s mentor, Talilo Marfil, calls out from behind the camera.
Dunham flashes a quick smile before his face reflects the soulful mood of the song.
“There are stories behind my music,” Dunham, who performs under the name Lil B Raps, said. “If I can’t get it all out, I write it all down in my phone or (on) a piece of paper.”
There is heartbreak and pain in many of the raps, poems and art projects created by participants in the Ascending Flow mentoring and advocacy program. Dunham is one of a dozen “mentees” in the grassroots peer group developed by Marfil and his team for young people aging out of Oregon’s foster care system.
Ascending Flow is the mentoring arm of New Narrative’s Compass Rose Program, which, in collaboration with the Oregon Department of Human Services, or Oregon DHS, helps meet the holistic needs of youth exiting care by providing integrated mental health care services and other assistance.
Compass Rose began as a pilot project in 2017 and became an official program recognized by Oregon DHS this November.
The peer group serves up to 20 youths at a time and provides uniquely qualified mentors who’ve endured their own childhood hardships, including foster care, incarceration, abuse and homelessness.
The mentors use their lived experience, along with the healing power of music and creative expression, to guide the participants toward health and independence.
“It’s really effective for those who have a lot of trauma,” Marfil, a local hip-hop artist and Ascending Flow’s program manager, said. “Just being able to express it through an artistic form.”
Marfil not only shares his musical talents with the mentees but encourages young people — like Dunham — to find their own creative outlets.
Dunham said recording music with Marfil and Ascending Flow’s mentors literally saved his life.
“If it wasn’t for Talilo, I don’t think I would be here physically at all,” he said, audibly emotional.
Dunham grew up in a family of nine. His parents adopted him from Mexico City at the age of 5, but he said his home life with his adoptive family disintegrated when he was 17.
Without sharing specifics, Dunham said he slipped into a depression, and a legal issue led to a separation from the only family he’d known for 12 years.
“It was the lowest point of my life,” he said. “I literally had everything. Then, the next second, I’m by myself.”
Dunham said Marfil helped open his eyes to a different perspective by encouraging him to focus on music and the meaning behind lyrics.
“With music, I am able to express myself instead of doing it with anger or lashing out,” Dunham said.
Songwriting helps him process what happened with his family and move beyond the hurt, although Dunham still hopes to share his music videos with his family someday and show them he’s grown.
“Now, music is my home, even if it’s not a physical place,” he said.
Lessons learned together
One of Ascending Flow’s first participants, 20-year-old Naomi Otey, had reservations about jumping into yet another program for youth in foster care.
“I was scared because I’d been in a few other programs that were kind of messy,” she said.
But within months, Otey realized this group was different — it began to feel like family.
“We’re all working on ourselves,” Otey said. “It’s amazing because you get to see each other grow, and you all go off in your own ways.”
Otey said she experienced tough times at home as a teen and entered foster care at 17. She lived briefly with a foster mother and two other girls but decided teen shelters would be a better fit for her than a stranger’s home.
When she came into the Compass Rose program and Ascending Flow’s peer group, Otey felt anxious about interacting with others.
“I barely knew how to talk to people,” she said.
Now, she’s not only talking to people but singing and recording original music she created with her mentors and friends.
“Ground breaks and I’m falling through the cracks now …” sings Otey, as Nay Nay, in her “Lessons” video on YouTube. “The ground shakes, and then I start to break down/ I don’t know if I’m going to make it out …”
Otey said pouring her emotions into her music wasn’t easy.
“I cried three times while I was writing this song,” she said. “I was like, ‘I’m not sure I want to follow through with this.’”
Now she wishes she had recorded more with Ascending Flow. Otey recently graduated from the Compass Rose program after reaching the maximum time allowed in the program.
Oregon DHS requires participants be at least 18 years old and complete the program before the age of 21.
“It’s sad to leave any place that’s good — especially after having made good memories, memories that stick with you,” Otey said.
Marfil encouraged her to work on her GED, get a driver’s license and consider volunteering with Ascending Flow.
He also suggested she apply to a local culinary arts training program to grow her love of cooking.
“I want to try multiple things,” Otey said, mentioning cooking segments and TikTok videos.
Through the mentoring group, she’s learned to rely more on adults for advice and to avoid getting distracted by other people’s problems.
“Get your stuff together because time slides by, and you have to stay focused,” she said.
Developing a voice
Otey’s 19-year-old roommate, Cayla Jai, who declined to provide her last name, has four months left in the Ascending Flow program and wishes it were longer.
“I’m just kind of figuring it all out,” she said.
Cayla Jai’s move from a secured group care facility to Compass Rose’s independent living program came as a dramatic switch.
“In the snap of the fingers, everything changed,” she said. “It was a lot of independence compared to where I was coming from, like places without cell phones and where I wasn’t even allowed outside without someone.”
Cayla Jai said she entered the foster care system as an infant and lived with an adoptive family for 14 years before moving through a series of group homes, shelters and secured mental health facilities.
She’s experienced 15 moves because, as she put it, “no one really wants a foster kid as a teenager.”
When she turned 18, social workers referred Cayla Jai to the Compass Rose program; Otey convinced her to join Ascending Flow.
“It was hard to even be a part of it at first,” Cayla Jai said. “I didn’t have the skills, or social cues, or anything.”
Marfil explained it takes about a year for those in the mentoring group to establish their true identity and figure out what they love to do; then, at least another year or so to develop life skills.
“Even those who haven’t been through super complex trauma and these types of experiences don’t have it all figured out by the age of 22 or 23,” Marfil said.
He believes it’s a disservice to youth exiting foster care when mandates dictate when they should leave an independent living program, especially when they’re not ready to stand on their own. Many of the young people simply end up in another subsidized program with an all-new cast of characters.
“It’s probably better just to stick with the people you’ve been building with — for however long it takes,” Marfil said. “You’re building a community, a family; that should be a lifelong thing.”
When Cayla Jai came into the mentoring group, she said she had trust issues with men and didn’t want anyone getting close to her. However, that eventually changed.
“Now, I’m a social butterfly,” she said.
Creating beats for her friends to freestyle over relaxes her.
“We just go with the flow, and that’s how it is at Ascending Flow,” she said.
She’s still working up the confidence to sing her songs in public, but she found her voice within the group. Cayla Jai is a member of Compass Rose’s new Youth Advisory Board and hopes to remain on the board after her graduation from the program this spring.
She said she already drew attention to some lack-of-structure problems within the youth program, which were promptly addressed and changed.
Creating equity in mentoring and youth work
Exson Sanchez, 19, is taking it one step further by becoming Ascending Flow’s first graduate to participate in the Youth Development Practitioner Apprenticeship, or YDPA program, which offers instruction and paid on-the-job training.
The program, registered and accredited through the U.S. Department of Labor, is designed to increase equity and access in the youth development field, according to a representative from FHI 360’s National Institute of Work and Learning — a nonprofit serving as an intermediary.
A health clinician with New Narrative encouraged Sanchez to apply for the apprenticeship.
“He just saw the potential in me to be able to help the kids and speak my experience,” Sanchez said.
His on-the-job training involves working alongside Ascending Flow’s mentors as they help participants tackle academics, artistic ventures and community advocacy projects. He’s also responsible for completing 350 hours of training instruction to earn his nationally recognized youth development practitioner credential.
Sanchez sees it as an opportunity to give back after being blessed with mentors who taught him to be independent, but he said it doesn’t make him better than anyone else.
“I still struggle and have my problems,” he said.
Sanchez was 13 when his father took his own life. He said the tragedy took a severe toll on his mother, and she struggled to recover for three years until state workers moved Sanchez and his little brother to a foster home. The boys eventually moved in with family friends until Sanchez’s younger brother could return to their mother’s care.
“It worked out, but I also had support that a lot of people don’t have,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez said Ascending Flow’s mentoring team provides a level of openness and comfortability for young people as they work their way toward independence. As a mentor, he said it’s all about putting the youths first.
“It’s not just letting these participants know what you’ve been through,” Sanchez said. “It’s more just letting them know you’re there to listen.”
Marfil said the most important thing he looks for in a mentor is a passion for helping the next generation.
“This work can be difficult emotionally when you’re trying to help someone who continues to make mistakes — some leading to the verge of death, you know,” Marfil said.
Long-term commitment is a must. Sanchez said it could take him up to four years to earn his federally recognized youth development credential, depending on whether he works full- or part-time. In comparison, state-certified peer support specialists in Oregon must complete 40 hours of training.
By the end of his apprenticeship, Sanchez expects to earn about $25 an hour, which is nearly $10 more an hour than the current state-certified peer support specialists at Ascending Flow. Marfil hopes raising the value of what mentors are paid to do this work will convince more young people to stick with it.
“It doesn’t just create a career pathway for youth to get into the field, but also seeks legitimacy from clinicians who have questioned why mentors get paid this much without going to college for eight years,” Marfil said.
Mentors who’ve experienced foster care, homelessness or the criminal justice system receive their own real-life education on how to relate to youths with similar backgrounds, Marfil said.
“The lived experience is only going to help me,” Sanchez said. “But I’ll also have the certification, the classes, the strategies and understanding.”
Advocating for change
Sanchez and the rest of the crew are taking their message to the streets, hosting community events to advocate for improved mental health funding and better awareness of the challenges youth face as they transition out of foster care.
At a recent neighborhood block party at Portland’s Mill Park, Sanchez showed off his break-dancing skills while Lil B Raps, Nay Nay and Marfil hit the stage with local rap artists, comedians and inspirational speakers.
An official video of the event features music created by Cayla Jai. Marfil plans to freestyle over it for the video’s final cut — another example of how music, mentors and a little motivation are helping young people move to their own beat.
“Now I have the freedom to express myself in all types of media,” Cayla Jai said. “I found what makes me happy, what makes me feel good, and I’m pretty sure it makes other people feel good, too.”
To Sanchez, the message is clear: Just because you’re from the system doesn’t mean you can’t do what you want to do.
“Even though the trauma is hard, keep pushing, and eventually you’ll open up opportunities for yourself,” Sanchez said. “Take advantage of those opportunities, and you’ll begin to see things in a different light.”
To watch the music videos featuring Ascending Flow participants, check out @streetroots on Twitter or Ascending Flow’s website.
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