Helping Rural Youth Find Their Voice
In Yuma County, Jorge Flores is helping the next generation turn ideas into action.
For many young people growing up in small communities, like San Luis, Arizona, finding opportunities and spaces to develop leadership experience can be a challenge. San Luis is a small border community located just across the border from San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, Mexico. While the city continues to grow, opportunities for teens and young adults are not always widely available, but one local educator is working to change that.
Jorge Flores is the Yuma Education Manager for Rural Arizona Engagement (RAZE). He leads the RAZE Leaders program, a free program for high school-aged students who want to take action on issues affecting their communities. Through mentorship, hands-on projects, and opportunities to connect with local leaders, students learn how to identify issues they care about, develop plans to address them and put those plans into action, with RAZE providing support and resources along the way.
Flores focuses on helping young students in San Luis recognize their potential and ensure they have a space where they feel safe, welcomed, supported, and respected.
He connects with local schools and organizations that work with youth to introduce students to the RAZE Leaders program and to find leadership and community engagement opportunities.
In San Luis, people under the age of 18 make up about 28% of the population. These young residents may experience and see things differently than adults living in the community. Rather than telling students what issues should matter to them, Flores encourages them to identify what they care about and supports them in finding ways to make a difference.
Whether a student is passionate about mental health, public transportation, drug abuse or another issue affecting their community, Flores helps them explore their interests and find opportunities to take action through RAZE Leaders.
That can mean students meeting with local leaders, attending government meetings, creating a community awareness campaign or developing a project that addresses an issue they have identified within their community. Flores finds ways to support students and their initiatives, whether that means providing transportation or connecting them with community leaders and organizations.
“At the end of the day, it’s going to be the students that are going to choose what matters to them,’ said Flores.
For Flores, meaningful mentorship starts before students ever begin advocating for an issue. It starts with creating an environment where they feel comfortable and safe enough to be themselves.
That can be as simple as asking students about their favorite snacks and drinks before a session, making sure their preferences are considered, or creating opportunities for them to get to know one another. These small gestures help students feel that they belong.
“There’s been situations where kids have told us, ‘I became best friends with this person in the program and if I would have seen her outside of RAZE Leaders, I would probably not even give her the time of day,’” Flores shared.
By creating a welcoming environment, Flores helps students build friendships, develop confidence and learn to work with people they may not have otherwise connected with.
He believes that before students can feel comfortable speaking up, they need to know they are in a space where they will be respected and accepted.
“Especially nowadays, there’s limited places where kids can be themselves. And I think being able to express themselves is the most important part,” he said.
One moment that has stayed with Flores involved a student who was initially very reserved and quiet.
During one session, Flores asked his students what music they wanted to play; he noticed the student wanted to share something but was struggling to find the opportunity. So he handed him the speaker and invited him to choose the music.
The student played songs that were ‘popular within the LGBTQ+ community’, and Flores watched as he became more comfortable sharing his interests with the group and opening up afterward.
“To me, it was a win when I saw him feel himself,” Flores recalled. “He felt comfortable enough to put it on the speaker.”
Flores’s passion for mentoring youth stems from his own experience growing up in Yuma County.
Having lived in the San Luis area for a long time, Flores has seen firsthand the limitations young people face when it comes to career paths, job opportunities and access to mentorship.
He remembers a time when programs like JTPA provided high school students with opportunities to participate in internships, summer jobs and other experiences that helped them explore potential career paths; that program has since ended.
Today, Flores worries that many of those opportunities are not as accessible to young people in Yuma County. That’s what keeps him motivated to seek opportunities for his students.
“I just feel like there’s more that we can do to empower the youth,” he said. “I think every generation can be better than the previous generation.”
That belief continues to guide his work.
When a colleague first reached out to him about an opportunity with RAZE to empower youth in his very own community, Flores initially thought she was asking if he knew someone who might be interested. The more he thought about it, the more he realized the opportunity was meant for him.
“I know you love your community,” he remembered her saying.
That was enough to make him consider the role. He knew working with RAZE Leaders would allow him to give back to the community that shaped him, while also helping a new generation of youth access opportunities he wished had been more available to them.
Over the past several years, RAZE Leaders has grown into a space where students can develop skills that extend far beyond their time in the program.
Since its first cohort in Yuma County back in 2023, RAZE Leaders has supported students in developing public speaking, communication, research and project-planning skills. Flores has seen students take what they learn in the program and apply it to college applications, internships, jobs and community advocacy. Some have gone on to speak at city and government meetings. Others have participated in internships, secured jobs, or continued their community involvement after graduating from the program.
One example is Oscar Pena, a former RAZE Leader who went on to become the Yuma Education Coordinator for RAZE, working alongside Flores. Oscar is now pursuing a nursing degree with Grand Canyon University.
“Jorge is the person who I work the closest with, and he has always been there for me, giving me advice,” said Oscar.
After Oscar completed the RAZE Leaders program in 2023, Flores encouraged him to apply for the Education Coordinator position that had just opened up.
For Flores, seeing students continue to grow and take on new opportunities is one of the most rewarding parts of his work.
“I don’t like to give myself credit,” he said. “But I just hope that I inspire them somehow.”
Even after students complete the program, Flores continues to keep in touch with former participants, share opportunities and connect them with people who can help them on their path to success.
Today, RAZE Leaders continues to expand across Yuma County. As of August 2026, through Jorge’s determination and partnerships he created, the program expanded into the City of Yuma, offering students different levels of involvement based on their interests and experience.
“There are a lot of communities that do things for the youth, but it’s more if you’re an athlete; there are all these different activities,” he said. “But what if you’re not an athlete?”
Flores and the RAZE Leaders program are filling that gap in Yuma County by giving local teens opportunities to explore their interests, develop their skills and discover what they are capable of.
While Flores is proud of the growth RAZE Leaders has achieved, he believes there is still much more work to be done.
As Yuma County continues to grow, he wants community leaders, educators and parents to think about whether that growth is creating enough opportunities for the young people living in the county.
Many students leave Yuma County to pursue college degrees or career paths that are not available locally. Others struggle to find their first jobs or gain the experience they need to enter the workforce.
Flores believes that investing in youth means giving them more opportunities to participate in their communities, explore careers and have a voice in decisions that directly affect their lives.
“We continue to grow and we brag so much about our growing, but are we doing it in the best way?” he asked
Aside from investing in opportunities, Flores says showing up consistently and reminding young people that someone believes in them is a huge part of setting them up for success.
He knows students face different challenges, and he cannot solve every problem they encounter, which is why he believes being a supportive adult can make a difference in a young person's life.
“You know, just having somebody at least like once a week or every two weeks knocking and telling them, ‘You can do it. You have all this potential,’” he said.
That sense of responsibility is also connected to the educators who supported him growing up. Flores credits his teachers for refusing to give up on him, even when he struggled in school.
“I wasn’t the best student,” he shared. “I had a lot of limitations and my behavior wasn’t the best, but they never gave up on me.”
Those teachers inspired him to become an educator himself. Today, he hopes to offer students the same encouragement and belief that helped him find his own path.
While he may not take credit for any of the students' accomplishments, his mentorship has helped create a foundation where young people can discover their strengths and take action on the issues important to them.
As the RAZE Leaders program continues to grow, Flores remains committed to helping rural Arizona youth recognize that their voices can make a difference and that they do deserve spaces where they feel supported and have opportunities to be themselves and speak up for what they believe in.
Giving youth a dedicated space, support, and opportunities to lead is the pathway to success and the change desired in small, rural communities.
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