This article is part of a 2023 series about outstanding youth who are making a positive impact on their community in Montgomery.
Carver High School junior ZyAsia Belser remembers exactly where she was when she first learned about youth incarceration and the reentry struggles that accompany it.
She was participating in an event with Destiny Driven Inc., the nonprofit that she participates in for debate and community service. Her peers stood up in front of the group reading poems that kids their ages had written from behind bars in nearby youth detention facilities. The idea was that the Destiny Driven kids would give voices to those who had their freedom taken away.
Belser felt overwhelmed with emotion. It could have been anger, fear, passion or any combination of the three.
“You could just see that it lit a fire in her,” Destiny Driven founder Crystal Aryitey said. “ZyAsia became really interested in the work that I do in my day job,”
Aryitey conducts research in juvenile reentry while pursuing her doctorate degree, but her first teaching job was at Southlawn Middle School in South Montgomery. She taught seventh grade, and she loved those kids. Several years later, Aryitey felt called to become a teacher at a nearby juvenile detention center, and it didn’t take long before she saw her kids there.
“Kids that were 11 and 12 at my former school, now they’re 16 and 17 at a juvenile detention center,” Aryitey said. “You see them again, and they kind of have their hope sucked out of them at the juvenile detention center. I remember the first time I saw one of my boys, and he just lowered his head. He was embarrassed.”
When Belser heard this story, her heart broke, and when she learned the statistic that more than two-thirds of incarcerated youth never return to school upon release, she decided there had to be something she could do to help them.
That’s how she got the idea for Homecoming Mentors, a program that pairs kids leaving the justice system with mentors in the community so they have support.
“We’re still looking into mentors from Alabama State and other colleges around Montgomery. We’re trying to look for people who are going to be willing and committed to being a mentor to these individuals,” Belser said. “It’s a slow but steady pace, but we’re going to eventually reach our goal.”
She and Aryitey still need to find a source for more funding before the program can officially launch. Right now, they’re aiming for 2024, and Aryitey said she is thankful for Belser’s passion for service to push the project forward.
Belser’s peers recognize her community impact too.
“She’s becoming a great role model for like other kids, just from the way that she gives back through some of the things that we do with Destiny Driven,” Loveless Academic Magnet Program High School junior Aaron Fullard said. “Talking about anything, she can make you think: how would this affect you if this was your family or your friends or if this was you? She does a very good job of connecting like the dots between things that we think are far away and making it hit really close to home.”
When Belser heard this story, her heart broke, and when she learned the statistic that more than two-thirds of incarcerated youth never return to school upon release, she decided there had to be something she could do to help them.
That’s how she got the idea for Homecoming Mentors, a program that pairs kids leaving the justice system with mentors in the community so they have support.
“We’re still looking into mentors from Alabama State and other colleges around Montgomery. We’re trying to look for people who are going to be willing and committed to being a mentor to these individuals,” Belser said. “It’s a slow but steady pace, but we’re going to eventually reach our goal.”
She and Aryitey still need to find a source for more funding before the program can officially launch. Right now, they’re aiming for 2024, and Aryitey said she is thankful for Belser’s passion for service to push the project forward.
Belser’s peers recognize her community impact too.
“She’s becoming a great role model for like other kids, just from the way that she gives back through some of the things that we do with Destiny Driven,” Loveless Academic Magnet Program High School junior Aaron Fullard said. “Talking about anything, she can make you think: how would this affect you if this was your family or your friends or if this was you? She does a very good job of connecting like the dots between things that we think are far away and making it hit really close to home.”
Beyond serving as the chairperson for Destiny Driven’s juvenile reentry program, Belser also participates in policy debates, helps organize clothing and food drives to help those in need and advocates for voter registration in Montgomery neighborhoods — though she isn’t yet old enough to vote.
“I like knowing that I’m doing a good deed, not expecting anything back, but just knowing that I’m making others lives better,” Belser said.
Though you wouldn’t know it from the trajectory of her volunteer work, Belser is not a stranger to adversity herself. Just about a year ago, her mother died, leaving behind Belser and her three younger siblings.
“I had to keep the fight in me to keep on going,” Belser said. “She used to go to all of my debate events. She always supported me through everything I ever did, so with that love and support that she had for me, I keep it going in everything I do now.”
Belser has a clear vision for her life, inspired by Equal Justice Initiative executive director Bryan Stevenson. She’ll go to an HBCU and major in political science with a minor in either pre-law or criminal justice. Then, she’ll go to law school and become a civil rights attorney. She knows she wants to practice in the South, but an exact location is undetermined.
“She can absolutely do anything in the world,” said her advisor, Aryitey. “I think she’ll probably go further than even she realizes right now.”
Hadley Hitson covers children’s health, education and welfare for the Montgomery Advertiser. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to the Advertiser.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: MPS junior works to ease the transition for youth post-incarceration
