A teenager from Immokalee will travel to Rome soon to take part in a global initiative for peace.   

About 40 young people from some of the most troubled places on earth will collaborate on  ways to bring peace to their home communities.    

Eighteen-year-old Sol Reyes said he is willing to give his all to build a better tomorrow.

He said he became inspired to act after witnessing ICE agents and local authorities stop and detain suspected undocumented people near Immokalee.

He and others took cell phone video of the arrests. The video shows law enforcement officers crouching over suspects on the side of a road.

"Your heart sinks and your heart sinks to your stomach and you are just feeling all sorts of ways," Reyes said. "Like the unexpectedness and the unknowing, and what's going to happen next." 

In the recordings you can hear bysanders shouting at the officers: "Get off of him, get off!" In another recorded encounter an officer shouts at people to move to the other side of the road, and uses profanity to tell them to get out of the area.

Reyes says he was stunned by what he saw in his home town, and by immigration enforcement actions in Minnesota that led to the killings of two U.S. citizens earlier this year.

"As much as it broke me, and left me hopeless, it also radicalized me and made me become passionate  about creating change,"  he said.

Now a group called Project Oxygen will give Reyes, and others, a way to make change and work for peace. Reyes was chosen to join about 40 other teens in a global peace conference in Rome in early June.

Teenagers from Ukraine, survivors of the war with Russia, will be there, along with young people who've grown up in the brutal civil war in Sudan.

Project Oxygen was founded by Kathleen Hessert. She is a former Southwest Floridian who now lives in North Carolina. She created the group called KidsKonnectUkraine, a few years ago.

She said young people surviving war and dealing with immigration crackdowns have an important thing in common.

"They have to hold their breath," Hessert said. "I mean our kids in Ukraine, who I've worked with since 10 months into the war, they hold their breath -- not knowing what's going to happen in the next moment. Will a missile hit their building? We're going to give them a place to exhale.  Give them a way to breathe again."

Hessert said Reyes' application and his his feelings about immigration enforcement, touched her.

"He talked about seeing people being pulled off the streets and sent to Alligator Alcatraz," she said, referring to the ICE detention center in the Everglades. "He said he had to stand up for his community."

Hessert choked back tears when she talked of the experiences of the teens chosen for the peace conference.
 
"The stories the kids told about their realities and how unjust they were...it made me want to put my arms around them and give then a great big hug!" she said. "But also give them a way to do something about it." 

Reyes is a U.S. citizen, and lives with his mother, who is a U.S. Army veteran, and other family members. He's graduating May 22 from Immokalee High school, and is the only Florida applicant chosen for Project Oxygen. He's also been dual-enrolled at FGCU, and has been involved in the Naples Council of World Affairs. He has been accepted at the University of Chicago on a full scholarship, and will move to the UC campus later this summer to begin his time in college.

But first in Rome he'll brainstorm with the other young people, and come back with a peace plan for Immokalee.

During Project Oxygen's May 31-June 5 activation in Rome, each teen will design a concrete peace project to implement in their home community, supported by a long‑term global mentorship network.

Reyes said he's learned from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group that advocates for farm workers, that consciousness plus commitment equals change. So he plans to put together a plan to inform other young people about what's happening around the world and locally, and then take action to protest what they determine to be injustice.

"So that's kind of where I see myself coming back into this community and brining that consciousness, bringing that awareness and finding ways to connect the youth to create change," he said.

Project Oxygen said it has raised more than $300,000 to bring the young people to Rome for the first week in June.

Pope Leo the 14th is scheduled to meet with Reyes and the others when they are in Rome, according to Project Oxygen. Reyes hopes to draw inspiration from the pontiff, and said he'll remember the teachings of another fighter for human rights.

"There's a quote from Martin Luther King:  Change does not come on the inevitable wheels.  But through continuous struggle.  And for me, like, that is what I keep close to my heart," Reyes said.

In Immokalee, like a lot of places around the world, the human spirit is resilient. Project Oxygen wants to see whether that, plus the hopes and energy of young people like Sol Reyes, can give peace a chance.

Mike Walcher is a reporter with WGCU News. He also teaches Journalism at Florida Gulf Coast University.
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