ST. LOUIS (RNS) Until he was relocated as a refugee from Somalia to St. Louis at the age of 27, Omar Podi’s life was one of continual discord.

As a child, he was forced to flee his home during civil war. As a teenager, he lost both parents. As a young man, he was wounded by a bullet, and later survived years in one of the largest, most crowded, most dangerous refugee camps in the world.

Arriving in St. Louis in 2007 was startling for Podi. He was free. But since then, he has been troubled by the memory of what he left behind. Now 30, Podi has decided he needs to change things for as many Somali teenage boys as he can.

He wants to save them from gangs, from terrorist networks, and from the boredom that can lead to either. He wants to save teenagers in both St. Louis and in Dagahaley, the refugee camp where he spent nine years, and where he began third grade at the age of 20.

To do so, Podi, a devout Muslim, is founding Somali Youth Community Services to create programs that he hopes will help this city’s estimated 300 Somali teens stay out of trouble.

Podi also wants to raise enough money to provide computers to the desperately poor and susceptible teenage boys in the refugee camps. Computers could give them something to do, provide them with a skill and give them access to information.

“The youth can have peace here, and they can have peace in my country, but there are people that try to mislead them,” Podi said. “They just need to know there’s help.”

In 1991, when he was 10, Podi’s country collapsed into a civil war. His family fled from Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, to Kismayo, in the south. The next year, his father, a government worker, tried to return to Mogadishu, and was killed. Podi is still grateful for American soldiers who, he says, helped his family survive a humanitarian crisis in 1993.

The family lived in Kismayo for eight years. Podi’s mother died there. He was left to protect his 12 younger siblings. Kismayo was a dangerous place, and Podi’s right arm and hand, mangled by a shooting in 1999, are evidence of the violence that was part of everyday life.

When he was 18, Podi fled Kismayo to Dagahaley, a section of one of the largest refugee camps in the world in the border town of Dadaab, Kenya. Today, 300,000 Somalis are squeezed into space built for 90,000, and the Kenyan government has resisted requests to expand it.

Like any city, there’s crime, commerce, desperate poverty, some relative wealth and violence, said Joel Charny, vice president for policy at Refugees International. There are mosques, butcher shops, schools, and homes. But no security.

It’s an easy place for extremist insurgent operatives to move into the camps, establish networks and recruit teens, Charny said. Those operatives are members of al-Shabab, or “the youth,” a terrorist organization affiliated with al-Qaida.

Reaching out to these teens is at the center of Podi’s plan. The fund-raising letters for his fledgling group say “the majority of youth” in the Kenyan refugee camps “do not see a future; they do not have hope.”

Hopelessness leaves young Somali men two options, Podi wrote in his fundraising letter: “immigration, or recruitment to fight in Somalia.”

In recent years, al-Shabab has exported the message of jihad far beyond Somalia’s borders to the estimated 200,000 Somalis who now live in the U.S. Since 2006, as many as 20 young men have disappeared from Minneapolis’ large Somali community. Six are believed to have died after joining al-Shabab.

The worry among law enforcement officials is about those who return to the United States after terrorist training abroad. The U.S. government has indicted 14 people for recruiting and raising funds to take young Somali American men back to a homeland they barely know, to join al-Shabab.

Last summer, Podi approached the African Mutual Assistance Association of Missouri for help getting his nonprofit group started.

“What he said made sense to me,” said Gedlu Metaferia, the organization’s executive director. “To keep young Somalis from being recruited or indoctrinated by extremist forces, that is in all our best interest.”

Metaferia gave Podi an office, a phone line and an Internet connection at his group’s headquarters in St. John’s Episcopal Church. “He has the patience and stamina to be a leader,” Metaferia said of Podi. “We’ll show him how to build his organization and how to reach out to youths.”

Similar efforts to connect Somali leaders with community organizations and law enforcement have begun elsewhere. Law enforcement officials say Minneapolis was a lesson, and the FBI was working with the St. Louis Muslim community to warn members about signs that teenagers may be in trouble.

“Jihad is really not the way to go,” said Mike Kaste, the FBI’s St. Louis field office assistant special agent in charge. “It’s not a way for young people to go to make any kind of constructive change in their lives.”

In December, Podi sent a Christmas message to potential supporters of the yet-to-be-born Somali Youth Community Services.

“We can remove violence only by working together,” he wrote.

(Tim Townsend writes for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in St. Louis, Mo.)