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Our People

People — caring, supportive, dedicated, compassionate people — are at the heart of Crossroads. From the board of directors who steer strategic planning and implementation, to the single parent who sits with their son or daughter every night to review homework — people make the collective heart beat of Crossroads healthy and strong. In this section, meet our students, staff, board members, alumni and donors of Crossroads. When you do, you may just want to join our cause and help us help the hundreds of wonderful teenage boys and girls that Crossroads’ supports every day.

Students

More than 100 Pittsburgh area high school students benefit from Crossroads every year. The majority of Crossroads students are non-Catholic and African-American. All are in need of financial assistance. Many live in single parent homes and several are being raised by grandparents or guardians. These youngsters struggle against peer pressures that entice them toward aggression, violence, gangs, and drugs. Many of their families are in crisis situations associated with physical, emotional, or substance abuse. Such internalized stresses, when compounded with the normal conflicts of adolescence, put Crossroads teens at high risk for academic failure, underachievement, and low SAT scores.

Research conducted by the Anne E. Casey Foundation (1999) has determined that children who live in families with four or more of the following characteristics face serious risks to their academic achievement:

• Child not living with two parents
• Household head is high school dropout
• Family income is below the poverty level
• Child is living with parent(s) who do not have steady, full-time employment
• Family is receiving welfare benefits
• Child does not have health insurance (Casey Foundation; 1999)

Among the students enrolled in Crossroads, the overwhelming majority falls within these demographic parameters. As a result of their circumstances, these students are exposed to cultural factors that place them at high risk for engaging in behaviors generally associated with academic failure.

Among the risks our students face (poverty, unemployed parents, broken families), Crossroads girls face other risks specific to their gender. The University of Pittsburgh Office of Child Development, Magee-Women’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh conducted an important collaborative study of adolescent girls in Allegheny County. Researchers observed the following:

In the concern over escalating rates of crime and delinquency among adolescent males, the unique and equally compelling needs of adolescent females have been largely overlooked. While the risky behaviors of females are, on the whole, less dramatic and less violent than those of males, these young women were nevertheless engaging, to an increasing degree, in activities that pose serious threats to their own futures and those of their children (Dempsey et.al; 1998).

Risk factors for girls in Allegheny County include the following:

• Poverty.
  Girls in Allegheny County have a one in ten chance of living in poverty (Dempsey et.al; 1998).
• Death.
  “Across race and economic lines, the leading causes of death among adolescent females in Southwestern Pennsylvania are unintentional injury, homicide, and suicide” (Dempsey et.al; 1998).
• Drug and alcohol use, pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases.
  As part of their research, Dempsey et.al. (1998) asked girls in Pittsburgh to describe their most pressing concerns. Sixty percent of the 13-16 year olds and 73-80% of the 17-19 year olds cited drug and alcohol use, pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s) as their major pressing concerns in their lives. One in every eleven births in Allegheny County occurs to females between the ages of 10 and 19. They are far more likely than older females to smoke during pregnancy and to deliver low birth weight babies. The rate of gonorrhea diagnosed among adolescent girls in Allegheny County was twice that for boys (Dempsey et.al; 1998).
• Eating disorders and abuse.
  Pittsburgh girls 13-19 years old also reported eating problems, excessive dieting, physical abuse, and sexual abuse as pressing problems (Dempsey et.al; 1998).
• Depression and suicidal thoughts.
  Depression and thoughts of suicide were reported by one in six 10-12 year old girls, one in five 13-16 year olds, and more than one in four 17-19 year olds. The implications of this trend are alarming and suggest that girls in Pittsburgh may become more depressed across their teenage years (Dempsey et.al; 1998).

Conclusions of the Dempsey study are harrowing:

Ironically, this generation of young women (in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County), whose members are growing up with more promises for career opportunities and independence than their mothers or grandmothers had, is becoming instead a generation of missed opportunities. Early childbearing and failure to earn a high school diploma are closing doors for many young women; the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, untreated depression and other mental illnesses, and increasing encounters with the criminal justice system are posing serious threats to their own and their children’s futures (Dempsey et.al; 1998).

Copyright © 2005 Crossroads Foundation.