Not too long ago, Jarel Melendez was a teenager in foster care with no plans for college and only a hazy idea of what his future might look like. But in the last eight years—Jarel is now 26—he found a career that suits him perfectly.

He realized he wanted to earn a living helping people and is now a professional youth advocate at Lawyers for Children, an organization that offers free legal and social work advocacy to kids in care. Jarel, who’s a former writer for Represent, talked to us in his office. He explained how he went from foster care kid working at a clothing store to college-educated adult with a rewarding and meaningful career.

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Q: What was your life like when you were a teenager?

A: I was in foster care from ages 5 to 18. I was adopted at the age of 18 by my maternal grandmother. I was in two different kinship placements and one regular foster home.

When I was an adolescent, I was all over the place. I wanted to do fashion one day, and something else the next day. I just had no real concept of how to achieve anything, but at 16 I thought I knew it all! You couldn’t tell me anything.

I am proud to say that I always maintained school. I was a geek, a nerd, because I knew I would carry my education with me anywhere I went. But in everything else, I was a mess.

Q: What did you do after high school?

A: While I was finishing high school I was working at H&M and they made me a floor manager. I was making maybe $18 per hour and I thought I’d be floor manager for the rest of my life. I pretty much had my mind made up that I wasn’t going to college, even though I’d graduated high school with a 3.4 GPA.

Well, my lovely mentor, who I refer to as my father, was convinced that I needed to go to college. I applied to Xavier University, which was in Louisiana, just to please him. It was 2004, and right before I was supposed to start college, Hurricane Katrina happened. My university was completely erased!

I told everybody, “See, it wasn’t meant for me to go to college.” But my mentor didn’t give up. He took my essays that I wrote about my foster care experience and submitted them to Baruch College. I worked with children for a year and then applied to Baruch. I stuck to the work and got my BA in business management. And now I’m pursuing my MBA in Public Policy.

Q: Can you describe your job?

A: I’ve been a youth advocate for a little more than four years. I work with young people who are aging out of foster care. They need assistance with getting housing, applying to college, getting jobs. My role is to help that transition go smoothly. For some, I solely help them get a New York State ID, which they need for employment. For others, I feel I’m their mentor. They’ll call me: “Jarel, I got my first job interview, what do I wear?” “Jarel, oh my God, I’m late! What do I do?” It varies client by client. I also run a youth advisory board here that consists of 50 young people and meets monthly.

Q: What’s the most difficult part of the job?

A: You have so many different people involved on a case: ACS, Lawyers for Children, the client we represent, a supervisor, and usually at a family team conference (FTC) setting there’s an FTC facilitator. With so many parties at the table, I sometimes find myself frustrated. I have flashbacks to when I was in care and the adults all talked without asking me what I wanted.

I sometimes find myself saying, “We have the young person right there. Why don’t we listen to them while all the adults take a chill pill and shut up for a minute?” We’re not talking about a file or a docket number, we’re talking about an actual human being!

image by YC-Art Dept

Q: What’s the most rewarding part?

A: The most rewarding part is when I can help my young adults do something they didn’t believe they could do. When a young person tells me, “Guess what, I got my first job!” I’m like, “YAAAAAYY!” I scream at the top of my lungs.

And I meet the client where they are. For example, I might acknowledge, “You used to cut school 10 times out the month, now it’s down to nine, we’re making progress.” Every success should be celebrated. No achievement is too little. I tell them, “We can’t change yesterday, but we can plan for a better tomorrow.”

Q: How did you go from being a kid in care to an advocate for youth in care?

A: I think sometimes life has a way of setting a path that you don’t even see for yourself, and if you have at least one caring, supportive adult, they will help you find that path. I never would have thought that this would be my cup of tea. I thought, “OK, I got adopted at 18, my foster care world is over.” But that caring adult, my mentor, said, “No, Jarel, you are way too smart and you need to share your experience with others.” Once I realized I could help someone, I did want to help.

Q: Does one worker in your foster care experience stand out?

A: Yes, my education coordinator, Ms. Jean Marie De Veaux, at Children’s Aid Society. She always had this beautiful smile. I recall telling her about everything, from me struggling with my sexual orientation to feeling like I was overwhelmed with AP exams in high school and I wanted to get a job.

She was the person in the agency who I felt listened to me. Other workers would jot down everything I said, they would tape record me, but they would not listen. Sometimes they didn’t even look at me.

As a child, you want people to acknowledge what you’re saying, entertain your ego, and she was the only person who did that. She listened from a compassionate place, a place of concern, and gave tangible feedback. I’m so proud she can see me as a professional in this field.

Q: What would you consider success on the job?

A: If I had my way, there would be no foster care. That would be my ultimate success: to eliminate foster care and only provide prevention services.

I like to aim high, but something more tangible would be having everybody transition out of care smoothly, whatever that entails for them. Everybody is different. Not all adolescents want to live on their own. Some want to be adopted. Others want to go live with a girlfriend or boyfriend. Whatever works for that young person at that time, that’s what I want for all: a smooth transition. That would make me happy.

Q: What advice would you give to teens who hope to go into advocacy work or another helping profession?

A: Be prepared. It’s not easy to be in a helping field, whether it’s social work or nursing or something else. Anything directly helping people is going to be very challenging. You’ll have good and bad days. It’s easy to get sidetracked with paperwork and protocols, but don’t let it overwhelm you to a point where you feel checked out.

If you’re genuinely in it from a compassionate standpoint, please maintain it. Remember what Gandhi said: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”