Higher Ground a Resource Center

Higher Ground was formed by its director Jansen Azarias the same year he got married to his wife Barbara in 2007. Two years earlier he met her just getting out of a divorce and living as a single mom to a 9 year old boy, Timothy. Jansen and Tim developed a bond and Jansen began to help Tim with his homework and began teaching him martial arts. Tim began inviting his friends to Jansen’s apartment and pretty soon, he had 8 boys staying at his place after school doing homework and learning some martial arts. Jansen saw that all the boys had one thing in common, at the age of 10, they all felt defeated and ready to give up on life. Majority of them have failing grades and have no passion in school or life. They had similar stories, coming either single parent homes, homes that were involved in substance or alcohol abuse, families with criminal history, and were deeply entrenched in poverty related issues.  Soon after, the parents of these boys requested that he form his own program and after speaking with the pastor of his local church, he approached Pistor Middle School and began Higher Ground.

Unfortunately the stories of these ten boys are the story of the community Higher Ground serves. Higher Ground serves a high-risk population. 70% of incarcerated people in State Prisons are high school drop outs. High school drop outs are 8 times more likely to go to jail. There are two high schools that serve our community within a 5 mile radius; Pueblo High School and Cholla High School. According to the analysis of Education Department data conducted by Johns Hopkins researchers for the Associated Press,both high-schools are considered dropout factories. They have a combined dropout rate of 45%.

In addition there are other high-risks among our students:

• 89% admitted to qualifying for free and reduced lunch
• 76% are from single/divorced families
• 30% of the parents/household members admitted to be dealing with substance/alcohol abuse,
• 15% admitted to having been incarcerated or is currently in incarceration
• 22% of the students are in foster care or lives with grandparents

Higher Ground is a place where lives are changed daily. The basis of our youth center is relationships. Programmings are merely an attraction to allow our students to have a positive expression for some of the risk-factors our youth face. Within the 5 years we have been in service, we have grown from 50 K - 8th grade students daily to 130 K – 12th grade students. We are now in partnership with TUSD, Pima County Board of Supervisors, United Way Youth Development Coalition and Stone Canyon Community Foundation. We are funded by different organizations who believe in our mission such as United Way, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Undisputed, Tohono Oodham Nation, and other corporations.

Take John Paul, if there was a word we would use to describe John it would be “Transformed”. John came to our program out of a drug treatment program and was expelled from school due to gang involvement. At first, he had a very hard time adapting to his new environment. He would run away, show signs of anger, and sometimes depression. After a few rough months at Higher Ground, he found himself wanting to help the younger students with their homework, teaching wrestling/jujutsu, and began to say “if I could just help one student stay away from drugs.”

By the end of the school year, he has finished his junior year at Cholla High School and has been clean for 9 months. He is a Sergeant in the Army Jr ROTC, and has passed all of his classes. John is now one of our best High School Life Changers and competed in a recent jujutsu competition as one of the team members of Higher Ground’s Jujutsu and took second place. He helped teach jujutsu during Higher Ground’s summer learning camp and is one of the coaches for Higher Ground’s competitive jujutsu.

Another student is Lindsay who has been with Higher Ground since the 6th grade. She is now a sophomore at Tucson High. Lindsay has two siblings Britney and Paul and she loves being a big sister. Lindsay has had a lot of ups and downs. Her father was incarcerated for 7 years, came back to her life for less than a year only to leave her and her family to fend for themselves. To support her mother who has had to work 2 jobs to earn sufficient income, she gets her siblings ready everyday for school. When Lindsay first started at Higher Ground, she was shy and quiet without any confidence in herself. Through Higher Ground, she discovered her passion of dance, teaching, and mentoring. Through Higher Ground she kept her grade to As and Bs. She also joined Higher Ground’s jujutsu this year and placed 2nd at the nationally ranked NAGA Grappling Tournament.