FREEPORT, Ill., October 30, 2017 (Newswire.com) - Emmanuel Ventouris is teaching kids and teen how to overcome life’s difficulties as well as how to stay on the right track when they are being confronted with bad influences.
He graduated with a 4.00 GPA and received a scholarship that helped him get into one of the top universities in the U.S. Now, he wants to share his story with others and help kids and teens do well in life despite coming from poor families, being orphaned, or living in bad neighborhoods where they are surrounded by a culture that makes it easier for them to sell drugs and harder for them to escape.
Emmanuel Ventouris speaks from the heart when teaching kids how to face life’s obstacles without falling down. He experienced his own share of suffering, and his road to becoming a successful graduate from one of the best universities in the world was not easy at all.
Emmanuel Ventouris holds classes even for young people with criminal records who need support and understanding to find their path to healing.
As a teen, he was living in a poor neighborhood and was raised by a single mother who did her best to put bread on the table. However, she was stricken by cancer when Ventouris was only 14 years old.
"My mother tried her best to give us a meal every day and a birthday present every year until she got sick with lung cancer. For someone that didn't smoke a single cigarette in her whole life, that was a big shock. To know that you can get such a monstrous disease even if you live a normal healthy life is crushing. I was 14 at the time. I grew up in a poor area of Brooklyn, and it wasn't always easy."
When he was just a teen, Ventouris was forced to deal with the shocking news as well as the extreme poverty that came right after the disease defeated his mother.
After his mother's death, he had to make a decision. Of course, he could choose the easy path and do what everyone else does, which entails selling drugs to provide for his siblings. He could also work twice as hard to break the vicious cycle.
"At that time, my mother couldn't take care of us as she used to. Everything became a struggle; there were days when my sisters had to ask on the streets for food. We started to live with food stamps and the generosity of people only. It didn't take too much until our beloved mother died, I was only 15 at the time."
Ventouris made the right decision and worked twice as hard as everyone else to get where he is now. He had to both study and provide for his family. Often times, he was studying during work too.
Any chance he got, he would pick up a book and try to get the most out of his time.
Today, he wants to help teens and kids make the right decisions too. He wants to provide support to the youth that is being ignored by the American educational system.
While the focus is on grades and performance, few people help troubled kids who have mental health issues due to their families, poverty, or abuse. "This experience made him grow up faster and learn how to be responsible earlier in life.
In the present, Ventouris continues to help his community grow by holding classes that help the youth grow emotionally and learn that they do have a choice to change their lives for the better.
Source: Emmanuel Ventouris
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