Contest Audio

Camden Youth Talks is a podcast that discusses the city of Camden, New Jersey. In this episode, they focus on the Romero Center, which was founded in 1998 as an urban retreat center. Inspired by Archbishop St. Oscar Romero, the center aims to address issues such as hunger, unemployment, violence, and lack of education and housing in Camden. Students from all over the country come to volunteer at the center, participating in the Urban Challenge, where they experience living like families in poverty. The guests, Will and Colton, share their experiences and emphasize the eye-opening nature of the center's work. The podcast hosts agree that the center is impactful and helps them appreciate what they have. I'm Chinua Shakweke. I'm Jonathan Luna. I'm Tavisa Velasquez. I'm Alex Garcia. And we are Camden Youth Talks. On Camden Youth Talks, we'll sit down with you each week and discuss the iconic places, issues, and everything in between. We will take on the buzz happening in the city and share our thoughts from our own experiences within Camden, New Jersey. ♪♪ Hello and welcome to the Camden Youth Talks podcast, a podcast that explores the depth of the city of Camden. In today's episode, we will discuss the Romero Center and interview some students from St. John's Prep. We will discuss the ins and outs of what the Romero Center means to Camden and offer our listeners an inside look at how the Romero Center is a staple to the city and our youth. What is the Romero Center? The Romero Center was founded on March 24, 1998 and had a vision as an urban retreat center here in Camden, New Jersey. St. Oscar Romero was an archbishop from El Salvador who campaigned for the rights of poor people and spoke out against violence during El Salvador's civil conflict. He was an advocate for bringing global awareness to the murder and missing people crisis rocking El Salvador in the 60s and 70s. The Romero Center provides Catholic education and retreat experiences inspired by St. Oscar Romero's prophetic witness. They assist issues such as hunger, abandonment, unemployment, violence, lack of quality education, lack of affordable housing, and homelessness in the city of Camden. The Romero Center ministries had only one intention and that was to bring the church community to the city of Camden and ground people in Jesus' call to serve the poor among us. Why do kids volunteer at the Romero Center? Why do they come? Students from all over the country come to the Romero Center to participate in the Urban Challenge. The Urban Challenge is an urban service learning, emerging experience rooted in the Catholic faith tradition offering a point of access to the lives and stories of the people in Camden, New Jersey and in surrounding communities in need. The Urban Challenge is based on faith, service, and community. Our guests today are Will and Colton. They are students at St. John Prep with a passion for faith and volunteering. They are going to share with us their thoughts about the Romero Center. Will and Colton, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you for having us. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? Like, what school you go to and where is it located? I'm Colton and I'm from Massachusetts and we live right on the water. Both of us come from really farmland-y places, just flat, nothing around, not a lot of development. Yeah, a lot of open land to play sports or hang out. It's a lot different being here. Yeah, a lot different from down here where it's a lot of houses that are close together. We have a lot of acres between us. And then we both go to St. John's Prep and the Prep is a Catholic school. All Boys Private Catholic School sponsored by the Varian Brothers, which is a nationwide corporation that sponsors schools. And we have a bunch of brother schools around. Yeah, a lot of brother schools. What does the Romero Center mean to you? The Romero Center to us is a way to kind of get out of our comfort zone and help out the people who are in need. And what we've been talking a lot in our school and at the Romero Center is kind of how to help the people in your community and kind of expand your community so that we can get new experiences and kind of bring what we learned from here back to our own places and be able to build upon that to make a better America kind of thing. Yeah, it's just an eye-opening experience. It's way different from where we live where a lot of people are luckier up there versus down here, people who aren't as lucky and we're able to help them and have them set them up for a better future. What does the service with the Romero Center look like? So far, we have 16 of us who are down here, and we're all split up into groups of, I'd say, six? Yeah, like six to eight people, three groups with chaperones. We've all been to different places. It's been like gardening or landscaping or helping schools, like playing with kids, or a lot of talking to people who don't get to talk to people who aren't listened to. We listen to them and we're able to learn about them and what their life is like. We went to the Ingalls Center in Philadelphia where there's people who are disabled and don't have really bad strokes and they might have been born with conditions. Yeah, like cerebral palsy and they're in electric wheelchairs now and it's hard for them to communicate with other people because they might have a spinal injury or something they're born with. But we would just go and we'd talk to them and kind of ask them about their lives and really just showed our presence so that we can make them happier because a lot of people don't really go and visit places like that. It's not something they think of. So we met a guy named Eric when we were there and he was super funny. He taught us all about life. He taught us about cars. Probably two hours we sat there. He was telling us about cars and what we need in our cars and how to fix a spare tire. But he was loving it. It was like the highlight of his day. He said it's something that he doesn't get very often where people come visit and they talk with him for hours at a time. Can you tell us more about the Urban Challenge? So we did the Urban Challenge yesterday and our group, I had four people in my group. Yeah, it was four people per group and everyone had four dollars to contribute. So everyone had $16 but every group had a different challenge. So some groups were allergic to peanuts. They didn't use gas because it was too expensive. They had diabetes. One group, one of the kids was an immigrant. He didn't have a green card. It was a green card so they only had $12 instead. We only had $12 for the four of us. So we ended up buying a loaf of bread, peanut butter, like half a can of jelly and I think ramen. Yeah, it was a lot of... You try and find the cheapest stuff and if it'll fill you up. And it's just different where we're just used to being able to have food whenever we want, go downstairs, have a nice breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in between. But this, my group didn't have breakfast. We had bologna cheese and tortillas for lunch and then we had Spanish rice for dinner with tortillas. And you're just hungry throughout the day and you feel so kind of empty of energy. It's more like what we're used to. We eat a lot throughout the day and when you come down here you kind of feel diminished and depleted of everything you have. So when we went out for that day and worked on the sites, I had half a PB&J after moving boxes and gardening and stuff all day. So I was really drained and that night I was starving. So it's really eye-opening to see what people have to go through and it kind of puts you in your place for how lucky you are to be able to eat all the time. Yeah, it really shows that this is people's lives. That's how they eat every day versus us. That was just one day and I think everyone could say at our group that they were starving or they felt so hungry, they felt so empty. But that's just a normal life for people. That's just eye-opening. It's really just a reminder of how lucky we are to be able to have a full stomach every night. Thank you. Thank you for having us. From our research and interviewing, we learned that students from all over the U.S. come to the Romero Center to volunteer and that they participate in the Urban Challenge. The Urban Challenge is learning how to live like most families in poverty. Alex, do you think you'd survive the Urban Challenge? No, I would not survive the Urban Challenge because I'm not good with money at all. I think it would be a struggle for me to have to live off $4. Jonathan, what are your thoughts on the Romero Center? How do you think it impacts candidates? I think the Center is a great place to practice to help the community and to be grateful for things that you have in life because not many people have the things that we have.