Imagine sleeping with noises of gunshots exchanged every night. Imagine coming home to a vacated house with no parent in the vicinity. Imagine living below the poverty line day after day and trying to hold up for your family and yourself.

Kids in north St. Louis have to experience this everyday. Gunshots and death is a part of their lives. Due to many varying factors (which are often similar) that arose in the city’s past history, kids do not have the same opportunity of having a parent, teacher, or even a role model in their lives.

According to Aaron Layton, director of diversity and middle school learning center teacher, kids have to live the dangerous life in north St. Louis that was set before them over fifty years ago. In the 1970s and 80s, the educated and working class emigrated out of the African American community and left the low-income neighborhoods and criminals behind. As a result, north St. Louis has, to this day, experienced a lack of resources.

This entails limited jobs and brings about a frustrated community. For some time now, many in the inner city have come to feel hopeless that nothing will change or improve. This can lead to self-destructive behavior.

Because of these frustrations, some children and teenagers grow up experiencing little else but the hopeless feeling in their community. Many students in the public high schools  knows a friend or family member that was shot and killed in their lives. As they deal with these often occurrences, some children and teens alike see violence as a solution to conflict.

“Contrary to what people think, kids don’t choose to be like that. They are born into it,” said Layton.

Many kids who grow up in single-parented households (or even without any parents) do not have any guidance. They grow up following the footsteps of older people they see in their neighborhoods because they do not know otherwise.

As hopeless as life seems for teenagers in north St. Louis, there are rays of hope and help that seek to infiltrate some of the most dangerous public high schools. A nonprofit organization called Urban K-Life has a mission to engage high school students in a loving and safe community at after school events. Cloaked as academic counselors, coaches, etc., the staff of Urban K-Life volunteers to become a part of the lives of students and immerse them in the Gospel.

By slowly familiarizing themselves to students, the staff spends time to gain the students’ trust. Even though they work as volunteers at school to help kids who need academic or sports guidance, the Urban K-Life staff have a deeper purpose of being there.

“We become a natural part of the school by volunteering there. We are there to serve and help kids. We gain the right of entering into their lives and by doing so, we jump up on the treadmill right next to them,” said Jason Julian, Director of Urban K-Life.

In Urban K-Life there are three levels of ministry. Level one, which is called exposure elements, engage kids with the Gospel, and according to Julian, there is not a lot of transformation that occurs. They have Klub once a week on Thursdays where they have programs, can hang out, eat a full meal, and are told about Jesus Christ.

Knowledge, the second level, brings high school students together in small groups and Bible studies. Kids can open Bibles and can listen to the knowledge of the Gospel. Staff members often meet once a week with students personally.

Lastly, Influence is the level that deals with the discipleship relationship. The staff identifies someone who is hungry for somebody to enter into their life as mentor. Accordingly, a member of the K-Life staff gives them undivided attention and hopefully life-changing results come from this relationship.

According to Julian, many who have come and stayed with the ministry call Urban K-Life and their volunteers home and family accordingly.

Urban K-Life becomes a safe haven and a place of contentment and joy, a break from life at home. Home for teenagers is not a place for gentle, tender love. Often kids who have grown up in this tough city have self-protection mode on all the time; due to not having parents present or elders around, they make decisions on their own. But when they enter K-Life, their guard drops, and they are surrounded in a loving and caring community.

“They have lived like this their whole lives, and because of that, they have become resilient, strong in spirit, and tough kids. They have the keen ability to see through adults in five minutes and discern the agendas they have in mind,” said Julian.

Through K-Life many students have been successful in graduating high school and pursue higher levels of education. They take away valuable experiences in which someone gave them undivided love and attention.