Removing the Mask : Taking Away a Child’s Anger Starts a Chain Reaction of Caring and Loving That Will Last for Generations : ANDY PADILLA

I’ve been in this community all my life. I grew up in the Ramona Gardens and Pico-Aliso housing projects and I had this dream all my life of doing something for the young people. I used to work with gang members in jail and I worked with the families of hard-core drug addicts, but I got burned out. I wanted to work with young people.

Here, we have workshops for the mentors and training the youth as youth ministers. I don’t like to say counselors because that’s a heavy burden. It’s peer to peer, and we are able to reach the youngsters.

We have to do something about this gang thing that’s gotten so out of hand. We’ve got to take this positive force that’s here and attempt to enhance and take it a step further. The little Munchkins--that’s what I call the 8- to 10-year-olds--have a program here and we also take the teen-agers on retreats. We took them to the mountains and they had never seen the mountains.

I made them do the limbo rock and little dances and the big, tough ones said, “I’m not going to do that.” So I took the toughest one and said, “You’re going to be my partner.” I made them dance and we sang the songs, and by the end of the day they were doing it on their own.

We remove the mask, the anger mask, the get-even mask. We do a lot of exercises that bring out the real person. When I do lectures here at the club, their reward at the end of the lecture is the dancing.

For the little Munchkins, I put on meditation music and they sit in a circle during the last five minutes of their program. I come around to each one of them and put my hand on their head and say good things about them, like, “Nobody can rob you of your dreams. You are so special.” They just can’t wait for me to come around to them. When I put my hand on top of their heads, some of them put their hands on top of mine so I won’t let go.

All of them have special gifts, and these programs are so important because we will nurture their gifts. All I’m doing is drawing out their gifts and it’s starting a chain reaction that will last for generations of loving, caring, giving and compassion. The gangsters are powerful. Without even knowing it, they have the power to influence others to do what they want them to do. They just need to use positive influence instead of the negative.

We are empowering our youth leaders and our adults, too, with exercises in communications skills and teaching them to be aware of body language. We do a mask with a smile and I hold it up to my face. We show them the different masks that we all use and how to take away the masks and show what’s really going on, what you’re really feeling.

I liken the youngsters to a beautiful crystal that’s shiny and pure. Every time an adult calls a kid a name, like stupid, fat or ugly, each of those words puts a black dot on the crystal and pretty soon the light does not shine through anymore. But you take away those dots and little by little the light comes through again.