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DECISION MAKING | WEIGHING OPTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES
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“At the club, I was able to get away from the drug peddling and the violent gangs.”
When she was younger, Liberty Franklin would come home after school to a dark apartment and find her alcoholic mother sobbing. She never met her father and lost her only picture of him. Her older brothers were in and out of jail, and her older sister was a drug addict.
Liberty, now 17, grew up with a lot of pain. But she didn’t let it bring her
her to stop drinking. “Now she’s in her third year of sobriety,” Liberty says proudly.
Liberty also began taking more responsibility at home. To help out financially, she worked as a bank teller and fast-food cashier even as she kept up with her schoolwork.
Now a senior at Everett High School,
Liberty Franklin leads the Boys & Girls Clubs as its Youth of the Year.
down. “I weighed things out,” she says. “I decided I wanted a better future for myself.”
How did she pursue this? In sixth grade, when her friends began drinking, Liberty began going to the local Boys & her Girls Clubs for help with homework. There, she says, “the
staff members took me under their wing. At the club, I was able to get away from the drug peddling and violent gangs on the street and the negative things in my family.”
At the club, she tutored children and helped organize events like Breakfast With Santa and a back-to-school clothing drive. She also joined a leadership group for girls, where they talked about things “like peer pressure and family life,” Liberty says. She gained confidence, enough to speak honestly to her mother and persuade
she’s ranked as one of the top students in her class. This spring she will be the first one in her family to graduate from high school.
For her leadership and academic efforts, in September Liberty was named the Boys & Girls Clubs’ National Youth of the Year and was given a
$10,000 scholarship.
As the representative of 3 million club members, she has met the President and will travel around the country to discuss important youth issues with business and government leaders. L
Liberty says her goal is to help boys and girls overcome obstacles such as poverty, crime and family problems.
“All I’ve done is to avoid the cycles of negativity. Little did I know I was leading my life by example,” she says. “Now I’m proving to my peers that they can do it, too.”
—Nancy Vittorino
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