Our Services for Youth Empowerment
Empowering Youth Through Leadership and Wellness
Start Your Hero's/Heroine's Journey
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
― Lazarus Long — Time Enough for Love (Robert Heinlein)
Empowering Youth Through Querencia Leadership Inc.
Claiming Querencia
Why Querencia?
The Power of Querencia: Leadership Forged in the Arena
In "Death in the Afternoon", Ernest Hemingway immortalized *querencia* as the sacred ground where a wounded bull reclaims its power—a space where instinct, resilience, and defiance collide to transform vulnerability into unstoppable force.
At Querencia Leadership Inc., we believe every young person deserves to claim their querencia—a psychological and communal stronghold where adversity sharpens their vision, setbacks fortify their resolve, and purpose ignites their agency. For youth navigating systemic barriers, trauma, or marginalization, this isn’t a metaphor. It’s survival.
From Reaction to Rebellion: Rewriting the Narrative
Too many young people are cast as the bull before it finds its querencia: cornered by poverty, discrimination, or cycles of crisis, forced to react rather than act. Systems often treat them as statistics—predictable, controllable, disposable.
We don’t “empower” them. We dismantle that illusion. Power isn’t given; it’s seized. Through guerilla mentorship (think underground book clubs and street art campaigns), wilderness expeditions that mirror life’s chaos, and apprenticeships with leaders who’ve carved their own querencia from rock-bottom, we help youth hack the script. They learn to weaponize their stories, reframe their scars as armor, and demand a seat at the table—or burn the table down and build a new one.
Anti-Fragility: Pressure is the Anvil, Not the Enemy
Life isn’t fair. But fairness is a distraction. At Querencia, we forge youth in the fire of strategic discomfort.
Anti-fragility isn’t resilience. Resilience bends. Anti-fragility evolves.
- A teen who’s been unhoused leads an urban design lab reimagining shelter as a human right.
- A survivor of gang violence choreographs dance battles that replace territorial lines with collaborative art.
We teach them to dissect fear: Is this a matador’s cape (a distraction) or the horn (their weapon)? Stress becomes their gym. Uncertainty, their compass.
Leadership as Sacred Trespassing
Leadership isn’t about titles. It’s about **trespassing into spaces meant to exclude you**—and rewriting the rules once inside.
True querencia isn’t a comfort zone. It’s a war room. Here, youth craft their manifesto:
- “My trauma isn’t my resume. It’s my artillery.”
- “I don’t ‘overcome’ pain. I alchemize it.”
- “My existence in this room is revolution.”
The Arena Awaits
The world is a rigged arena. Querencia Leadership Inc. doesn’t train youth to play the game.
We teach them to become the arena—to expand their *querencia* until the walls of oppression crumble beneath its weight. Because when a generation stops fighting for a seat at the table and starts building palaces from the rubble?
That’s not survival. That’s a reckoning.