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Pathfinders delivers help to young people in need
Pathfinders is an agency dedicated to helping young people of Milwaukee. In 2020, the agency helped 4,100 young people.
MILWAUKEE - Pathfinders is an agency dedicated to helping young people of Milwaukee. In 2020, the agency helped 4,100 young people. A program called the "Street Beat" travels to different areas of the city and offers necessities, information about resources and support.
"We call ourselves ‘trauma-informed care on wheels,'" said Milton Byers III, an outreach specialist with Pathfinders.
Byers works with the agency’s "Street Beat" Program. Byers and other specialists pack the "Street Beat" car with necessities like shampoo, toothpaste and snacks. They deliver the items to young people in need all over the Milwaukee area.
"So where we meet young people is not caring about how they got to where they got to, what they’re doing to survive. It’s engaging with them regardless," Byers said.
The "Street Beat" car has put a lot of miles in Milwaukee. The program, which typically helps 11- to 25 year-olds, has been around since 1990. Pathfinders also has a drop-in center that is a safe place for young people and a shelter in Walker’s Point.
Byers says many young people in the program experience homelessness.
"Sometimes, you may meet someone who's homeless. Like, ‘I’m homeless. I need a house,’ but they’re not ready. They’re not ready for a house. They’re not ready to maintain a house, so it’s like, do we get you a house, and then in two months, you’re evicted and we have another problem, or do we find a way to holistically support you?" Byers said.
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Another avenue of support through Pathfinders is the mental health resources. Meredith Head, one of the trauma-informed care outreach therapists, said Pathfinders uses a non-traditional approach that allows young people to feel more comfortable.
"It's more about like, building a relationship and then proceeding from there. I'm inviting them into my office to like, chat or, you know, get some stuff off their chest rather than, you know, like, starting a therapy session," Head says.
Head said that insufficient housing is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the challenges young people face.
"There's the trauma of like, racism and segregation in Milwaukee. There's a lot of sexual trauma and exploitation. There's a lot of like, systemic sort of trauma and also like, intergenerational trauma that filters down from like, grandparents, to parents, to the young people that we see," Head said.
As a Milwaukee native, Byers knows what these young people face.
"And struggle, when you only know struggle, it doesn’t look like struggle. That’s just the way you live," Byers said.
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Speaking from experience, Byers said he stayed at Hope House for a time, but his mother did her best to shield him from the rough times. Byers said he’s thankful for his upbringing and now wants to pay it forward with his work at Pathfinders in helping young people find other activities.
"Introducing them to other avenues. Helping them develop some soft skills to maintain actual jobs as a teenager," Byers said. "For me, I think that’s something I’ve learned over the years, that Milwaukee isn’t a bad space. It’s a place where a lot of people want to do better, and a lot of people have the potential to do better but our, just, navigating systems that are pushing them back a little bit."
And like their namesake, Pathfinders guides young people through those systems to find their own path.
The organization does have an Amazon Wish-List and ways to help donate.