{"id":3774,"date":"2020-12-09T13:05:15","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T18:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=3774"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:28","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:28","slug":"undaunted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2020\/12\/undaunted\/","title":{"rendered":"Undaunted"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Juan Rios and a new online summer jobs program have kept opportunities for growth alive for East Orange students despite massive shutdowns statewide. Rios knows firsthand the lifeline these jobs and programs can offer.<\/em><\/h6>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

Higher education was far from Juan Rios\u2019s mind when he got his first job at age 14. Through a local youth program in New Haven, Connecticut, he spent the summer cleaning up public housing complexes \u2014 restoring facades, tidying park areas, and often throwing away empty crack vials and used needles.<\/p>\n

He earned $3.75 an hour (this was the early 1990s), and \u201cit was because of that money that I was able to buy lunch, dinner, and even my school materials,\u201d says Rios, now an assistant professor and director of the master\u2019s in social work program at Seton Hall. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine what would have happened to me if these programs had been canceled because someone didn\u2019t meet the call.\u201d<\/p>\n

But due to the global pandemic, that could easily have been the fate of a similar program in East Orange this summer if a team including Rios hadn\u2019t stepped up to help.<\/p>\n

Through its annual Summer Work Experience Program, the city offers teens summer jobs, just as Rios had at their age. Nearly 400 people participated in the six-week program last year, with assignments ranging from sprucing up city fire hydrants to creating an art mural to interning in the mayor\u2019s office. These paid experiences were all put in jeopardy this summer, though, when COVID-19 swept on-site work off the table. Then VIP Online Academy, co-led by author and activist Jamila Davis, offered to help put the program on the internet, and soon Seton Hall became a partner in the effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted Seton Hall to be involved because I really believe in the [University\u2019s] strategic plan \u2014 especially the portion about community outreach to promote the greater good of society,\u201d Rios says. This year\u2019s Virtual Summer Work Experience Program in East Orange is \u201ca direct, quick, immediate response to a need that\u2019s happening in the community,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

Rios and East Orange Mayor Ted Green became the program\u2019s co-directors, helping more than 300 teens earn $10 an hour for a 20-hour online work-week, with tracks focused on academics, trade and social activism.<\/p>\n

Rios oversaw the academic track, which supplied a taste of college life, introduced \u201cfaculty members who look like them and may have had similar life experiences to them,\u201d and conveyed the crucial message that \u201cI, too, can go to college,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The slate of presenters included Majid Whitney, associate dean and director of Seton Hall\u2019s Educational Opportunity Fund Programs, and first-year adviser\/ROTC Military Science instructor Julius Moore. Rios presented, too \u2014 and as he spoke to the East Orange teens about trauma in low-income communities, \u201ca lot of memories came flooding back,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Born in Panama and raised in New Haven and later Jersey City, Rios was the youngest of three siblings. He recounts how his family experienced a range of issues, including financial struggles and frequent upheavals. \u201cMany would consider me a statistic,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

As he watched friends and neighbors die from drugs or violence, Rios never expected to live past 18 himself. \u201cI saw \u2026 where I didn\u2019t want to go,\u201d he says. \u201cSo what\u2019s the only [path] no one has tried? Stay in school.\u201d He also needed the free meals that school offered, he says. At times, those meals were the only reason he kept showing up.<\/p>\n

Thanks to free social programs and a series of strong mentors who became surrogate family, he got through high school and was accepted into Southern Connecticut State University. \u201cI didn\u2019t care how many student loans I had to take out, I just wanted to get away,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In the wake of his own experiences with social workers and Child Protective Services, Rios majored in social work. \u201cI swore, since 15 years old, I wanted to be a CPS worker because of all the influences they had in my life,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted to be someone who could help those kids being transitioned from home to home do it in a way that\u2019s healthy and inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n

But after several years, \u201cI realized that you can\u2019t really change the system from within,\u201d he says. So he pursued master\u2019s and doctoral degrees in social work at Rutgers.<\/p>\n

Today Rios\u2019s research focuses on social justice and its intersections with virtual reality. He plans to study how children \u2014 \u201cespecially Black and brown children\u201d \u2014 respond to emerging technology, including online communities like the one he helped provide for East Orange kids this summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for the opportunity of this virtual community, what would have been the alternative for these children?\u201d Rios wonders. He already knows the impact such programs had on his own teen years. But now, several decades later, he has the chance to evaluate and measure them as an academic \u2014 a twist he never saw coming at age 14.<\/p>\n

Molly Petrilla is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Juan Rios and a new online summer jobs program have kept opportunities for growth alive for East Orange students despite massive shutdowns statewide. Rios knows firsthand the lifeline these jobs and programs can offer.<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingUndaunted<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4972,"featured_media":3775,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[259,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-2020-2024","category-faculty","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4972"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3774"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3851,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3774\/revisions\/3851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}