 Well, good afternoon. I'm Ron Haskins from the Brookings Institution and also the NE Casey Foundation. I'm somewhat of a scholar and I go to tons of meetings, conferences all over the country. And the thing that always concerns me is you hear about all these programs and you see all kinds of charts with, you know, what the results were and what the program was like, but you never actually see a person who was in any way affected by the program. All you see is, you know, data and analysis and so forth, which is an important part of it. I mean, that's really important, but you still walk away feeling like you were somewhat deprived because you never got to see the people that run the program or the people that are in the program and hopefully benefit from the program. So I want to congratulate the organizers conference for ending the day with what the last panel said might be the most interesting panel. And that is a panel of people who have been directly involved in the program for a very long time. So that's my job here is simply to keep the conversation going, ask some interesting questions. And we're going to begin by asking each of our participants. So Kathy Tasker from West Virginia and Wesley Jones and Sparky Edwards, correct? So I'm going to ask each of them to take about five minutes and tell us their story. What, why they wound up at the National Guard Youth Challenge program and what your experiences were like and then what you've done since. But not in the long, you know, maybe five minutes for each of you and then I want to ask some questions. So Kathy, why don't you begin. Thank you very much to all of you for hosting this event. This is truly a great opportunity to put the spotlight on something I'm very, very passionate about. I have two degrees. The first one is in business management and I took that and went to work in the court system. And I found out that there wasn't much hope in the court system. So I went back as a nontraditional student and got a degree in education. And shortly after that, as I was working in the public school system, a newspaper article appeared in December of 1991. And I even brought that newspaper article with me today. I still keep it. It was announcing that Youth Challenge was coming to my area of the state of West Virginia. And I thought that's exactly the kind of education that I want to be involved in. So I started pestering the adjutant general's office just a little bit and we stayed in contact for the next 18 months. I was fortunate to be hired on when the program started in August of 1993 in West Virginia as an instructor. And on the day I checked in, the school principal didn't show up. So I also got those tasks. And within two weeks, the deputy director quit. And I also got those tasks. So I did all three jobs for about six months until they hired another instructor. And I served in the position of the deputy director for 18 years. In the last two years, about two years, I have been the program director. I feel just as lucky and fortunate to be involved with the program 20 years later, as I did during those first weeks when we were standing up the program. I went to work August 6th and September 14th, we had students on the ground. We had stood the school up because the groundwork had been so well done. We graduated the first class from a challenge program on February the 14th. And it truly was a celebration because we were able to put hope back in the eyes of those children and their families. Good, thank you. Wesley, push the button, yeah. Hi, I'm Wesley Jones, graduate of Fort Gordon Youth Challenge in 2008. And I was, I think I was led to a challenge by a number of things, but primarily in the public school system for me was boredom. I didn't feel challenged with the work that I had. And I would request more work from my teachers when I got done with my work. So if I got in trouble, I realized that my teachers would put me in the back of a class that was a greater, too higher than mine. And so I said, oh, this works. If I get in trouble, I get to go learn new stuff. I get to go learn new things. So I continued that process of making a poor decision to get seemingly good results, but at some point it stopped yielding good results. And it went from being a way of making decisions to being a lifestyle. And it led to me getting in consistent trouble and a very frustrated mother who gave me an ultimatum. At the time I was involved in gang activity because when I moved from the neighborhood that I lived in and my parents got divorced, I moved to a rougher part of town and I was the new kid on the block and people wanted my things. And I was outnumbered and I sought security like any kid would. And I found it in gang lifestyle. So fast forward to when I'm in ninth grade now. And I guess I'll venture off and say the point that the gentleman made earlier about ninth grade retention hit me very hard because I got kept back twice in ninth grade. And at that point I just decided it was over for me. So my mother gave me an ultimatum, said either I would stay with my gang or stay with my family and I chose to stay with my gang because I considered it my family. And that didn't yield the best results. Calder told her that I was planning on going to youth challenge or that I just wanted to turn around. And I went there and I got to see life where I wasn't just that bad kid, that knucklehead from the block. I was actually a positive person around positive people who were committed to letting me see what I could be. And the challenge staff was there with us every day whether I was making good decisions or poor decisions. They were there giving us good counsel and good advice and just pushing us to be everything that we could be. And so from there I went on. I took all the lessons that I got from there and went forward to be a more positive person, but beyond that just being a person that knows that positive things exist. And so that's why I'm here today and I just wanted to thank you all, everybody that's in this room for caring enough about letting people see something other than the four corners on their block. Thank you. Thank you, Wesley. My name is Sparky Edwards. I come from the Thunderbird Challenge Program 2000 from Oklahoma. The center touched on my case earlier this morning as that everyone who comes into the program is not stereotypical. I came from your regular average working class family. Not a reason in the world I should have been in trouble. I was the kid with issues, not a kid in the family with issues. My mom and others in my support chain started talking to me about the program. And while they were talking to me about it, they were trying to get me interested in it. And what I had heard through other friends was that it was a detention program and I was very resistant. They finally convinced me to look at the program, to go out, see the compound, see the cadre. There was an open house day and I found out that it wasn't what I had heard it was. And I fell in love with it and immediately wanted to go start the application process and went to the program. I loved every minute of it. The cadre were perfect role models. The mentor program was the best thing for me. While at the program I went through recruiter day and I was one of the few in my class that joined the military. The statistics they talked about this morning is about right. I had a class that graduated around 80 and we had about 10 that went into the military. My recruiter was great, put me in the military, went into the army, served in field artillery, did a little time as a drill sergeant and then reclassed over to intelligence. I was in 10 years, ended up getting injured and got retired September of 2010. They treated me well and gave me a good retirement and I came up here to work in the federal sector. I worked in government for about 21 months, went ahead and stepped away. I had started two international companies, one a security firm and that is what I'm currently doing. I'm the director of security for the firm. Also my education from the program they really pushed us to continue education to always be learning. I started to peak mine by getting my associates in police science and it charged me and I just fell right back in love with learning. I got my bachelor's in intelligence studies and I just actually had my commencement last Saturday for my master's in defense management. I finished back in February and now I'm starting my PhD in organizational leadership. The program gave me everything I have. I really don't know where I would be at. I also got mixed up with gangs and had no reason in the world not to. My PhD was just a lack of very big lack of discipline, lack of sense of direction and the program gave it to me. They turned me over to the army where it continued and I think that model they talk about with the way the military is, it truly did. It was what picked me up. Most of the graduates that I know that did not make it after the program went home for extended periods of time, one to two, three months and most all of them that joined the military didn't make it to basic training. I went home for six days before my basic training because I knew being at home I was going to go right back to where I was. I even took a position in Korea with my first duty assignment and it was to get as far away from where I was as possible and it allowed me to start with what the challenge program gave to me and build a life for myself. All right, good. Thank you very much. Wesley, tell us a little bit about since you left, how long ago did you leave and what have you done since you left the National Guard program? I left. I graduated in August of 2008 and after I graduated I was working at the campus I graduated from as a peer mentor for two years just basically being- So you worked for the challenge program for a couple of years after you graduated? Yes sir. I worked there for two years being a peer mentor basically being someone that the cadets could relate to and while I was working there a gentleman named Bud Oster came and offered me a scholarship to go to aviation school so I went there and got my commercial pilot's license and I've since been going back to school for music engineering but I do have my commercial pilot's license and I have it because of the challenge. So you fly commercial planes? I have the ability to. I detected difference. Slight. All right, so let me, I want to, I've worked a little bit in what we call employment and training programs which is a huge deal now because employment is a big problem in the United States and a lot of employers complain that especially kids coming out of high school are not really prepared to work and something that a concept that is developed is something called soft skills and soft skills simply means you show up to work on time, you get along with the people you work with you can take directions, you respect authority and so forth. So that probably is an area where a lot of young people especially young males fall down nowadays and they can often get a job but they don't keep it very long because they don't have these soft skills and they're trying to find actual skills required for the job. So let me ask you, do you, not just about yourselves but about the people that you were enrolled with when you were in the challenge program and I'd love to hear what you have to say about this too and that is do you, does the program give you those kinds of skills to importance of being on time the importance of doing, you know, the tasks at hand and getting it done with others and those sort of things that employers expect and are very disappointed with people don't have. Did you learn that in the challenge program? Yeah, absolutely. You know, the littlest thing sometimes, if I'm ever running late for a meeting or anything I think, man, someone's going to smoke me when I get there. I mean, someone's going to wreck my world and it goes back to those instructors. Were you married at that time? No. But it goes even deeper than that because they really did reward and instill that value for being on time for being responsible, for being dedicated, having a sense of purpose and drive. They go as far as to help you write resumes like they do in high school when you're graduating. They give you real world skill sets. There's technical programs in there. There's different skills that you can go into if you kind of know what area you're wanting to go into. But they hold you responsible for everything you do. And when they give you these privileges, they can be taken away real quick. And you get that real good sense of what I can lose just by being late or being irresponsible. And I think in high schools, you don't get that. You're late, you know, what happens? There's not a lot. The program holds you responsible. So you're first engulfed in your responsibilities as an adult at that program and you come from it with that. Leslie, what was your experience like in this regard? I agree entirely. Punctuality was really important throughout the entire time that I was in Youth Challenge. You woke up and you went through a certain schedule daily. And I personally don't think it was about programming people to do X, Y, and Z. As much as it was about knowing that you have personal responsibilities that you should meet every day. And you have a schedule that will allow you to attain those things or whatever your personal goals are. But I agree with Sparky entirely. If I'm late, if I'm late five minutes, I feel like I'm late 30. It's just how it is. Not 15 minutes early or late, right? Exactly. Every time. Kathy, you must have a much broader perspective. Are these goals of the program and how do they try to fulfill them? The whole person concept is totally an accurate way to describe challenge. And we use the expression, you are the sum total of all your experiences at our program. And that's very true. And that is a perfect fit for the eight core components, which include these soft skills that we're trying to instill. But it doesn't matter how many awards or ribbons or presentations we have, it's the internal changes. And we start talking about that during the orientation before you come to challenge. Is this going to be the right fit for you and your family, the kind of education you can get behind and support? So when we do that, we use the term self-discipline. But many parents associate discipline with punishment. So we've changed that to self-structure. We're going to use standards. We're going to use a training schedule. And we're going to use the appropriate staff to help teach you some time management, some organizational skills that no matter what you do in life, you're going to be able to take those skills with you wherever you go. You're going to go from being someone who makes bad choices to someone who makes good choices. And you do that because you know internally the benefit that can pay for you. And with that comes a sense of great pride. So Wesley and Sparky, Kathy talked about bad choices and good choices. I think one of the things, and this really was implicit in Hugh's point when he talked about the classmates that he knew that were, he called them knuckleheads, I think. And you said knuckleheads, too. You're the only kid I ever heard say knucklehead. I thought that expression went out with World War II, but that's just about when Hugh was going into college. It was the World War II. So here's the question. Hugh says he saw the kids later. They were in the military. They were ramrod straight. They looked good. They sounded good. They stayed out of trouble. This is my question. What do you think it is about the world? Both of you, by the way, said you had been in trouble. And we're in trouble at the moment you went in. And you even said that you didn't want to go back where you live because you're afraid you'd fall right back into it. So what is it about the program that helps kids stay out of trouble? What was it that helped you and your other classmates and especially if you had classmates that you followed after they left and they got back in trouble, why do you think that happened? What do these programs have to do to keep kids from getting in trouble? One of the things that I've noticed just because I'm a great world of social media now, staying in contact with a lot of the graduates, Facebook and different things, I've noticed just personally because I ask every one of them where they're at. The most successful ones that I knew or I know currently, they didn't go home for very long or they had some type of job lined up. Someone was there to help them when they got out with either education, scholarships, something. One of the guys at Jonathan Burger is a OSBI Oklahoma State Bureau investigator right now. He got out and had a mentor there ready with a job and to get him away from it. I don't know anybody who went back home to their hometown with just what they had left, just their stipend and trying to keep up with their mentor that actually made it. I don't know of any from my class at least. Going home and going back in those old habits, the Challenge Program can give you a whole bunch of tools and the things you need to succeed, but as she said, it's in us and when you go home, it's hard. Old habits do die hard and from what I've noticed, it's that follow on after the program and where they go from there and the Army is a great catalyst for that carry out of that. Did the program do anything after you left? Was there any plan or you've told us what you actually did? Did the program play a role in that or did you work that out yourself for? Yeah, there's a lot of different things when you're leading up to the graduation from resume writing to getting some certain skills on the computer at that time. 14 years ago, computers were out, but there was a lot of emerging technologies and they were like, hey, what do you want to do? IT, there was college credits available. So there was a variety of things we could do up to graduation. One of the biggest things was the career day for the military. You were required if you went no matter what to talk to every branch of recruiter and it did, got to explore it, got to look at what I truly wanted and that was my match. Others found college credit and that's what they did. They left and went straight to school. Others got a skill set from a VOTEC or a program and they went into IT. Some of us were volunteering at state parks. They went into parks management. There were so many avenues that the program offered us right there before graduation that we take advantage of but it was truly up to you to do it. Other than that, you could sit back and go on cruise control. Like they said, it's voluntary and there's a lot of cadets that do it. There's a lot of them that just graduate like a graduate from high school but that's all they want and it's sad but it's truly up to you but there are great programs in there. Question. Just to piggyback off what Sparky said, it really is a lot about whether or not you go back because it's in a sense similar to going back to high school if it didn't work for you the first time. Nothing really changes about your environment. You go back to the environment you came from and the same people are still there and the same things are still happening. So, me personally, when I graduated, I left. I was on campus at Youth Challenge so often that people thought I moved when I graduated. I was never there and then I moved to Arizona for school and I moved to Minnesota and I moved to Kansas. And after doing all this moving around, recently I went back to my hometown and I was just walking around and I began to look around and say, wow, this is the same group of individuals I was with three years ago and we're doing the same thing right now. I still see them doing the same thing. It's almost like there's an insert, I guess in certain areas or in certain places it's almost like life is just paused there and if you go back to where it's paused then you're going to be in the same scene more or less. So, I think escaping from that mentally and thereby escaping from that physically has a lot to do with what people do after they graduate or at least be personally. There's a definition of insanity that says it's when you do the same thing time after time after time and you expect a different result and it sounds like that's what both of you are saying that if you go back to the situation you came out of that caused the problems that you were having in the first place then you're going to have disaster. So, if that's true, then you would expect a challenge program and especially with the outcomes that we know about because of the evaluation that one thing that they must try to do is to help the kids avoid what happened to them before so help them make plans and so forth. Tell us about that. We have a very formal process within Challenge to help deal with this and it's two phase. One, we start working in the application phase identifying mentors. So, as the child's coming in the door we are already collecting potential mentors that can help them not just after graduation but during that process people that can help them network and communicate with schools and things back home or in totally different areas to help them expand those goals. So, the mentoring component is a very strong, unique thing to challenge but we also have a very formalized goal planning course that all the students go through and they develop what we call the PRAP the Post Residential Action Plan and we start that during the residential phase and we teach them how to build smart goals things that are realistic. I would love to have been Dorothy Hamill in my childhood so that dates me. The only problem was there was an skating rink within a hundred miles of me and we would have a lot of students that would come in with a goal to well, I'm going to play professional basketball but is that realistic? Are you on that track? So, we have to take it one step at a time and make sure that those are specific and measurable and attainable so we put all those things together in a plan and we practice that during the residential phase what are your goals for the next three weeks for the next six months and as they're learning that and learning how to focus on themselves and their life then they start to get that sense of empowerment that I really have control and opportunities that I can focus on after I leave challenge I have that skill set now and it's not being selfish because I've left the problems of my home environment behind I can come back to that environment as an adult and help out with my family but to do that I have to focus on me now and so we're building that action plan and they've had experience with the goal planning they've seen it work so they can take that into the next phase of their life and we call that post-res On the specific issue of going back to their hometown their own home, their own situation does that concern you if that's going to happen do you have a program that you systematically try to figure out a way to keep them from going back to exactly where they came from and if you find out that a graduate is going to go back does that concern you? We don't have a lot of the issues in West Virginia that these young folks have described so our problem is employment opportunities so we're concerned if someone is going back to a home environment where there's no potential for school or employment so those are our two big focuses that we're trying to get everybody into that either they have a job to go home to or we're going to find an educational opportunity for them so those are our two focuses Sparky Kathy mentioned mentors and we've heard about mentors several times today and I can tell you there's quite a research literature on mentors as well did you have a mentor? Did the other kids in your program have a mentor? Talk to us about your own feelings about having mentors Yeah, everybody in the program was required to have a mentor if you couldn't find one that did have methods for a team and you up with volunteer mentors during my course I got to hear the stories why I was in the program as a cadet there was some mentors that were letting their cadets do the wrong thing and that's something that's a mentor's failure and they're failing the cadet at that point but for the most part the mentors are getting trained they're getting programs, they're getting outreach they're getting special assistance and helping them to be a mentor properly with the special needs that we had in the program later on my wife became a mentor for the Tar Heel Challenge for a team down in North Carolina and I played a big part in that because I'd been there and my wife was never exposed to that type of life so she was a great role model but at the same time I knew what the team was going through so I was kind of going through my wife and helping her to understand and back and forth What do you mean by team? What do you mean by team? Especially with the females it had to be a mentor on cadet that's all you have so my wife may come home and say oh she's having these issues or the cadet they're doing this or this and I'd help her to understand what she meant it's like she's speaking in different language because the cadets do somewhat have a different vocabulary than their mentors oftentimes especially with my wife and this one I was in an altar and I noticed a lot of guys had a different vocabulary Exactly Yeah, you were in a whole new language so it was a lot of I guess I was helping my wife more than anything but it did help the cadet but getting to see some of the mentors I'd take her on mentor day to drop her off and seeing some of the mentors and what they were doing how they interact during the days they would allow them to go to lunch there'd be a restaurant full of mentors and getting to listen to conversations I'm a person that pays attention mentors play a huge role there's huge impact on them and they're the people that they're supposed to go to once you graduate your mentor is the person you go to most of the programs I know of there's certain rules family member wise and how the mentors have to be structured certain training the mentors have to commit to and then having a mentor that is committed is very important they back out halfway through the program that may be the only person that cadet has that they see as that figure in their life they just quit on them and everybody else in their life could have already quit on them and now they're in the middle of this program it could drive them to quit because like they've been saying today it's voluntary and I'll tell you what cadets will leave at the littlest thing they'll leave Wesley how about you did you have a mentor and did you feel your mentor helped you and also talking about the other kids there did they have mentors in your view does the mentorship program work? I think the mentorship program works it personally worked for me my mentor was Samaya that I had grown up with he went to my church he was a deacon at my church and he was there for me as a mentor before I went to challenge but it became more important to me what having a mentor was while I was there because there were days when I wanted to go home I really did and just having someone say no you don't understand right now but in two or three years you'll understand why it's so important that you stay there if you don't have that voice and you're just operating based off what you see in front of you at the time or what you comprehend then it gets really difficult to navigate through your choices and as far as seeing other cadets and their mentors I could see the same effect in them and it it kind of changes the way you look at your mentor because I see what my mentor said somebody's got to be telling the truth here if everybody says stay here I might need to stay here so I think the mentorship program works it works for me and it works for everyone that I experience for both of you from the perspective not just your own but other people in the program with you was there generally a respect for the mentors to the most people most of the kids in the program feel that this was an important part of the program and they had a good mentor and the mentor actually had influence on them I never saw anything opposite of that they always had some type of respect and honestly the first part of the program you're so cut off through Hell Week and then different things that mentor is a treat to get to see your mentor someone from the outside outside the walls was a big deal one thing the program did incorporate and allow is even if you were in trouble say you had messed up because most kids at some point are going to get in trouble in the program to do something you may not be able to leave but they still allow your mentor to come and talk to you the program sees the mentor as such an important role that no matter what you're doing or where you're at in a program that mentor has access to you they'll bring them in they use them and it truly is it's a treat the respect is there I think it's almost compelling in a way that you don't have a choice to and it really is but it's in a good way I never saw the opposite of that though ever in any mentor that I was exposed to Wesley, you agree with that? I agree and when you have a mentor when you do get in trouble that's when you really need the mentor the most it's kind of easy to be able to stable when you get in trouble and someone has to come say well that was a poor decision it makes it very important that they still allow you to see them but I agree with that entirely one of the keys to the mentor is the trust factor between the cadet and the mentor and the program a lot of times educates the mentor not to go running back to the parents and tell them things there has to be a bond between that mentor the parents don't have access to the kids or the cadets like the mentor does the mentor is almost explicit access parents don't get that so a lot of times parents are going at mentors trying to pry information but it's real important and another challenge program expresses to the mentors to keep that confidentiality between them to a certain extent of course but that is key and we got that North Carolina with ours it was pivotal that the cadet she was mentoring their parents lived across the street from us and believe me it wasn't in a good way with the mentor program because they were constantly wanting to know things but it was so important to keep that respect there and it sounds like something like privacy between the cadet and the mentor once you break that bond of trust I can imagine a full shutdown would not be far from that with the mentor and the cadet so Kathy you've been seeing this program from several different perspectives I've been involved a little bit with mentors and read a little bit about it a number of programs have problems A. recruiting mentors and B. retaining mentors how do you recruit mentors what kind of people do you try to get do you have trouble keeping them and above all this point that I think Sparky made about if they quit in the middle maybe you made this point but if they stop in them the cadet as far as we do the program it really has a negative impact on them how important this is you've got to get the right kind of people so tell us about that we use a youth initiated mentoring strategy so we're trying to build friendly matches so as the student is applying to come into the program we're asking them to get two or three people they already know that are positive working role models and we coach during the orientation we coach the parents on who those good fits would be because that way we're not starting from ground zero we're starting with someone that they know and trust or respect because if you think about it what a tremendous compliment it is if a young person in your community comes to you and says I respect you enough in what you do to help me get to the next step in my life so that's the basis secondary to that if we have someone anywhere in our state that absolutely cannot come up with a mentor that does not stop that child from taking advantage of challenge because it's the kids first we have an entire network of citizen soldiers in West Virginia and we are fortunate in our state to be part of the guard mission and every Wednesday during the adjutant general's leadership meeting he asked the question have you done for challenge this week so we have that resource to help match people in their home community with a trained mentor so these are usually former National Guardsmen that join your network and get the training and all that and they're available in case a kid cannot find a mentor correct that's our first line and then we use civic organizations within the communities to help us as well because giving back to the community is always part of their mission to be established a network to help recruit mentors I don't know if you know about the national program but is that the way it's usually done to involve the family involve the adolescent and they play a big role in selecting the mentor or is it selected for them by the program no this is national this is part of our post-residential training manual and experiences that works pretty well you don't have this problem of mentors quitting and all that there's someone that moves for a job and that's why we ask all the students to come up with two or three and we try to train as many of them as we can so that if the number one cannot fulfill the obligation we're ready to go with the second all right it's obvious to anybody in this room that y'all quite pleased with the program I have a feeling that might have part of the reason that they were selected but I have yet to hear about a program that doesn't have some problems so think back over your experience in the program or since the program and really now what level is this what are the things that you think are the weakest that should be improved that would really help the program if they could do it better you don't have to say it was the weakest but use that in your selection and tell us the things that you think should happen to improve the program um I guess I'm talking a couple that I've noticed but it's been 14 years since I was in my program and I've talked to some of the directors the Commandant, Commandant Edwards is still there um and they've made some huge changes they've probably fixed the concerns that I know of um while I was there it was a little too easy to quit um there there was you know speed bumps that they would try to run interference and counselors and talk to them and mentors but to me it was still just too easy and maybe at that time being in cadet you know I didn't fully know how hard it truly was they were there and they were gone and um in some ways it's good for the rest of the kids they don't want to be there at the same time I kind of thought it was a little too easy for them to leave um also the uh after there was a stipend and then there was the mentor now I didn't get to get too involved in a lot of the what I call aftercare I don't know the post-residential phase um because I I yeah I was gone so I don't know um I just know a lot of people that went back home didn't make it that they had nothing to do with the challenge program so I'm sure they were 14 years a lot of those gaps have been filled and fixed um my fact I think at the Glaw I had talked to the Oklahoma uh member that was there and she had told me that yeah they had done great strides in those areas Wesley that's a tough question I'm really because I love the program so I've been breaking my brain trying to come up with an answer um I think probably the closest that I could come up with is possibly emphasizing the importance of the post-residential process more to the cadets so that they don't feel like they're uh they walk out of the gate they get their cap and gown and it's all over um I think it should be it should be emphasized a lot more that it's really important that you follow up on those 12 months whether you're doing good, whether you're doing bad uh no matter what it's important that you follow up on those 12 months because the people that are calling you or getting in contact with you in that post-residential phase the same people that cared for you the same the six months you were there so that's probably Kathy uh I'm going to ask you the same question but I'm going to use different words because you're in the program you are the program uh so if you criticize you'll be criticizing yourself but tell us the parts of the program either before people get there or while they're there or afterwards that are the greatest challenge for the administration of the program I'm going to pick up on one of the things that Sparky mentioned and that was too easy to quit and we've tried to build in all kinds of procedures it's not easy to get in and it's not easy to get out and we brief that at the orientation so the families know and understand you have to be committed as a family because they've already shown up at the orientation that tells us that they value their child and their education and yet we still have students that run or walk off and we struggle with that and say why is that this is the perfect opportunity why would you walk away well we've trained our students to walk away from bad situations instead of fighting or getting aggressive or arguing or being disrespectful it's better to walk away and sometimes they just need to cool down so whether you're a professional and you call that elopement or away from supervision or whether you're in the military and call it AWOL we still deal with that so that hasn't gone away but we've laid the foundation through the orientation process to help reduce the number of times that we've done that we really need as a program to make sure that we don't repeat the mistakes of public school because what the students tell us that they like and benefit from in the educational arena are small class sizes and knowing that someone cares it matters whether they're there they know my name and so immediately as soon as our students hit the ground the staff's first function is to learn their names no nicknames no knuckleheads and we've had that before I think that comes from the Marine Corps at least on our staff it did so you have to know the Marine Corps has much more colorful names than that I can assure you so we want them to know that from the time they show up at the orientation and they register on opening day from that point forward you belong to the challenge family you matter to us and so it's not going to be easy for you to quit and give up on yourself so we know we don't want to get class sizes that are too big or staffs that are too small you have to have the appropriate staff who can really coach and mentor these people to the next step in their life truancy is epidemic and it is starting at the elementary school levels some of the counties in West Virginia have hundreds of families in the court system for truancy issues and it just continues to grow through junior high and high school so we have to look at the cooperative agreement the terminology we're using to identify the population we serve is it only the drop out or is it the student who is not attending school because I'm here to tell you that public schools will keep those names on the list because there's dollars involved with those names but yet those students are not there and they're not participating so we need to make sure that we can capture as many out-of-school students as we can to help get them the credential they need to launch into their adult life and we need to make sure that we're giving credentials to these students that are going to help them and get them to the next step and I'm very proud of a couple initiatives that we've been able to do in West Virginia and hopefully we'll be able to replicate in other challenge states in 2005 we became recognized as a special alternative education program by law what does that mean any high school in the state could use us as an alternative ed site and that student could transfer to the challenge program and you would get the money? we did not take the money the schools kept the money we did the work this year actually last Friday we were able to present an award on behalf of those home high schools high school diplomas we estimated that with our history of how far we had come because West Virginia I need to brag a little bit West Virginia is 12 and a half points higher than the national challenge average for GED success and we test everybody and we always have so with that background we thought 30 to 40% of our student population would be able to take all the steps necessary to earn the high school diploma I'm here to tell you we got 70% of our graduates high school diplomas Friday so those two initiatives are going to help the students down the road we never had a problem getting a GED student an ACT and a scholarship in West Virginia we're getting into community college but we have struggled with tier one status with the military and this is a DOD program so maybe that high school credential was going to be the piece for all of us that helps flip that over and help us get tier one status for our graduates okay audience we have questions from the audience for any of our panel members yes right here if you would please just stand up and tell us your name hi my name is Jessica Washington I have a question for both of you I know this program is voluntary and I want to first applaud you all for taking that step to realize that you all needed to change but we all know that all dropouts aren't necessarily created equal and everybody doesn't have that drive to do better the breaking point for you I guess or what kind of like spurred that epiphany like hey I really need to change my life and I need to turn around you know I watched some of these shows like Intervention and some of the addiction shows and it shows that rock bottom and for me there was a rock bottom I remember it was Mother's Day and I got in some trouble and broke some laws and I never see my mom cry over me getting in trouble and it was Mother's Day of all days and she had been talking about the program for about a month at that point and I realized that was my rock bottom what I was doing to my family personally like I said I came from a great family so to see my family in the array and the shambles I was putting it in was my rock bottom and I think a lot of graduates that I heard stories from they didn't agree to go to the program usually until they hit the rock bottom and everybody's got a different rock bottom it just depends on their situation and what it is but I could pair a lot to that kind of addiction and it's truly when you hit rock bottom and it is a last resort often times so I think that puts some of the graduates in who run and when she said run that's literal I mean kids crawling over me in the middle of the night to get out to run at the back door and take off down the street so they do run but a key to your success too because that's all you have and one of the things they brief you on on the day of intake is that you're at your rock bottom this is it and they let you know you're down here but we're going to get you where you need to be and that was the key to my success I don't think I know some people's rock bottoms go from being okay to just a drastic decline but for me it was gradual after getting put out of school and moving to Atlanta and getting put out of my mother's house I kind of hung around with the same gang gang affiliation that I had in Augusta and I moved to Atlanta Georgia which is a little rougher than Augusta is and I went to an event at Centennial Park with my family and I saw some people from an opposing gang and one person walked by and that was fine with me it really didn't rub me wrong and then the second walked by and I kind of got a little irritating that third walked by and I took his bandana and in gang lifestyle bandana is your identity so I took that and threw it on the ground and I got into an altercation there that left me with a couple broken ribs and I couldn't tell my mom and I couldn't tell my dad who I was living with at the time on the other hand you couldn't walk that was a problem too but there's that issue but I really had to sit back and think about it it's like this sucks but it could be so much worse and if I continue this lifestyle for doing this I don't get a retirement plan from gang banging nothing comes from this if that altercation went further than it did then those tears would have been dropped aside from that of my actual family and so that was my rock bottom I couldn't continue at that point I think the difference too we've been talking about this a lot today where we all come from Atlanta, Georgia, one of the roughest cities in the nation I came from Fort Gibson, Oklahoma you probably never heard of it it's right next to Muscogee you know exactly I think they put a stoplight in a few years ago just to say they have a stoplight so you can see from Atlanta, Georgia to small town, Oklahoma the oldest town west of the Mississippi you know it hits everywhere it really is a problem across the country no matter where our youth are it truly is a huge problem call one time I lived in North Carolina we used to go to the beach and took a whole bunch of people from work and it was a new person that we'd hired who was quite young and she was from rural North Carolina and to get there in the old days you go through a city called Fouquet Fouquet, Verena so we're driving and we had made jokes about what a rural hick town and all this and she's sitting in the car and we go through there and she said well you know she said it can't be that small they have a McDonald's another question yes here wait till you get to make a follow okay thank you wonderful to hear you guys I'm Jim Crotty by the way I write about education and have run after school programs and the thing that struck me is like the importance of real structure in a young person's life I was fortunate my dad though he's you know great depression worked five jobs, put himself through college etc I ended up being a doctor and you know he was fortunate in his situation I had the benefits of growing up with him and his deep sense of structure and that helped me but the thing that I think you guys probably faced and people in your program faced the same problems I faced I mean I didn't go to the military for various reasons but I ended up becoming strangely a Zen Buddhist and there's this very samurai approach in Zen Buddhism where you have to sit for 90 days not talk, not look at anybody in the eye get up at 3.30 go to bed at 10, it's military basically and in Korea I was at a Korean Zen Buddhist center and they said you know the name of that 90 day retreat it's like a boot camp they called Kilche which is hard training and then they have a term called hei j which is soft training and they said the hardest part is hei j because there's certain comfort that comes from being in the structure I mean you do go through the hell and you have your breakdown and I broke down and cried I said I can't do it, you know I'm like 23 years old, get me out of here I want to leave and I hung in there and then I got to love it because I knew when I was going to eat every day I knew what was expected of me the rituals were the same like you said we had our own language from school to everything and the hardest part was getting out and like the world doesn't act this way they really don't and you want the world to now be the way you know how to do the world so I want you to just talk a little bit more about that because to me it was really really hard once I got out it was to me too and it still is to some degree because I got used to waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning and going to do PT and doing all the things that were Youth Challenge and then I graduated and I was like well this isn't right what do I do now, there's no schedule okay but yeah I would agree that is the toughest part but I think in my personal life the foundation that Youth Challenge gave me to be able to set my own schedule still be able to follow a schedule to know how to set my own and be able to stick to it as opposed to just saying well I'm going to do this and I might do it and I might not was really beneficial for me in the long run not having structure I think was my downfall before the program of course at that point didn't know once I got in I fell in love with it I fell in love with the discipline, fell in love with the structure and luckily I went to the military and spent it for a while and I lived it so I didn't have to face that now September 2010 when I was retired you would have saw one of the most scared individuals I think in the world because I was scared to death of what I was about to face and it took me a while and I still worked through it and that's coupled with war stressors to military stressors to structure stressors but it's still ongoing and I think I still deal with but I create my own structure and I still live in my own but when I see organizations, work environments schools that don't have structure it makes me uncomfortable I think that's about the extent I don't like it at all there's some strange thing here that they both have said really essentially the same thing which is the experience of having that they didn't have before they went to the challenge program that they were able not necessarily have as much and not to have to depend on someone else to send it to set it but you set it yourself you knew how important it was so I think that's really the most crucial point Kathy wants to say when you're at challenge we take away a lot of the distractors our students don't bring technology with them we don't watch television we learn in this environment how to prioritize and we incorporate that into the post-residential action plan and their goal planning class what are you going to do day one when you're home without challenge and the goal is to have each cadet leave the program knowing where they are going to be on Monday morning that first week without challenge I'm going to give you an example this is true we graduated on Friday and Tuesday evening I was working late and got a phone call and it was cadet Eddie Wise Mrs. Tasker, I need to talk to my case manager I'm so excited I started my new job today I interviewed yesterday and today was my first day I'm going to work long hours and I'm going to love it because I'm just out there and I want everyone to know what are you doing I got hired by an escort service now as an adult see your mind went right where mine did but he's going to be working driving cross-country as one of the flag cars that is required as they travel cross-country and he wanted to travel and see the world and he doesn't turn 18 until the fall and he wanted to have some experience he wanted to travel more than just going back home so he took that job he's training for it he's thrilled to death so I have a cadet in the escort business another question back here in the back my name is John Dias and I'm with the National Guard Youth Foundation I'm relatively new and one of my duties is to help the board raise money to support the National Guard Youth and in particular to help raise resources nationally that help our graduates move on to that next phase of their life a question for our two young gentlemen if somebody were to come to you and said we've got all the money and all the ideas and all the leadership in the world but we want you to tell us the answer on how to place those ideas and leadership and money and we want you to answer the question what would it take for the 18 year olds who now have their GED they're not going to go to the military they're not going to college that 70% of the 18 year old graduates got a new GED what would it take money, resources, opportunity for them to go into a sophisticated job training job workforce development program what would it take for them to sign up to go into an intensive potential program another city to get some training what would it take to ensure that every graduate got into a workforce development job training program and actually had the responsibility of securing their job before they left that I think everybody's got their different what would it take for them to try to generalize it the task itself that would some of the problem but that type of creation for going somewhere going to a job training field getting them skill sets or certification credentials because one of the things is the programs are short in a sense you really can't get any large credentials that are truly pivotal right now in the market so being able to put a graduate in a program to get them some type of certification some type of spreadsheet or office or business certification would be huge for them in the job market what would it take I think the opportunity the program the positions, the companies to assist money to keep them afloat as far as to earn a paycheck while they're doing these programs most of the certification credentials programs so in relative terms yeah on a large scale it's probably a lot of money but it's not that much in what we're going to be paying for them if they don't succeed or if they don't go anywhere after the program as we've talked about with I know quite a few from my program who wound up back in jail so I think having that resource there, having programs that are committed to helping them after they graduate and putting them in those at the go law I talked to quite a few people who were talking about their programs I think it was some of them from California one of them Sunny Sunburst and they had some corporations that were placed in graduates and IT training and different program certifications and paying them as what like anybody entry would be but it was enough to give them purpose, responsibility to complete that certification and then offer them a job and totally change everything they're looking at after they graduate I would say that the a big thing that it would take is just continuing to listen continuing to listen to them and what their personal desires are where they want to go in life because as long as you listen as long as you listen and they feel like they can trust you then they'll tell you what they want to do and so just just continuing to listen to figure out what they want to go and from there how to get how to help them get to that place Any other questions? Alright, so I think you want to tell people where to go to get will you give them booze or what are you doing here? In fact, let me say something I've been involved in research for a long time and last couple years I've been doing a study of the Obama administration's evidence based initiatives and one thing that I've learned during this period this is really interesting about 80 to 90% of programs that are evaluated by a random assignment design fail. They do not produce the outcome that they were designed to produce that that was suggested in one of the previous panels and this is true in business as well. So to have a program here that the first time it was evaluated in a serious random assignment design produced a big impact it's really amazing there's something about I think what it really says something about is the concept the idea it's such a solid idea and of course there's a tremendous need for it and to have the military involved I think that's another essential ingredient to model the thing on discipline and self-responsibility and so for those are all crucial elements but it is a great thing and it's a tremendous compliment to the program that this has been proven to actually produce results with the kind of people you find out there in the country side to really have in trouble and they join a program that's not some kind of hot house university affiliated you know it's they're all over the country I think I saw 34 or 37 sites something like that I think eight of them were in the evaluation so it's really a remarkable thing that this program has been shown to be effective everybody claims to be effective but 90% of them are not Well Ron thanks very much for moderating this panel and I thank all our panelists for a terrific job it was fascinating to listen to you before I turn you loose to the reception I want to thank a few other people I think all our panelists deserve thanks because they were willing they care about this program a lot this problem a lot and they wanted to come talk about it when I thank you all for participating in this and bear with me for just a moment I want to thank John Hamery at CSIS and Craig McKinley and Gail Dady at the foundation for supporting this and I want to make some particular Chris Jane for putting this together Ashley Saunders for doing really a lot of most of the hard work Nicole Darden here at CSIS for doing a terrific job and getting this together and a lot of other volunteers that were around from CSIS and the foundation for helping out so we want to thank you for doing this we appreciate your interest in this issue everybody in the country needs needs all of our help on this so please stay at the reception and enjoy yourself and thanks again for coming