"I am not going to give up on you," Counselor April Blair says, locking eyes with one of the students of La Sima's youth program during a group discussion. "You are not going to drop out. You are too close to graduating."

The 96 students involved in La Sima are closer to finishing school than they ever have been before, thanks to the dedication of counselors like Blair. At La Sima, afternoons are filled with tutorials, modern dance classes, African drums, or educational programs about HIV prevention, conflict resolution, and substance abuse. Many of youths in the program come from single-parent households, some have a parent incarcerated or disabled, and many are impacted by substance abuse.

"You have to understand the environment that the youths come out of and the frustrations and disappointments that they deal with on a daily basis," explains Executive Director Paul Clarkson. "There's no one to take these kids to Disney World."

Understanding the environment and building a repoire with community residents is what drives Clarkson and his staff as they provide HIV and substance abuse prevention and counseling to their community.

"We go into areas that other people don't go, and we talk about things that others don't talk about," says Clarkson.

When Clarkson started talking about HIV and substance abuse in South Dallas five years ago, he had extensive experience in doing outreach to hard-to-reach populations. He had much less experience

in searching for funding. Faced with the task of writing entire grant proposals alone, Clarkson called the TEES Center for Community Support for help. "The Center for Community Support wrote almost the entire first grant proposal for us," said Clarkson. "We then used that proposal as a model as we put together other grants." "The Technical Assistance provided by the Center for Community Support on the actual writing of the grant was invaluable," said Clarkson. "That assistance enables us to continue our mission of providing HIV prevention, education, counseling, and substance abuse treatment services to those most in need in the Southern Sector of the Greater Dallas Area."