 My name is John Hamery. I'm the president here at CSIS, and when Kim and Chris asked if CSIS would be willing to host this, I said, yeah, absolutely. We have a very proud to say that CSIS, this is before I came, that CSIS was kind of a starting point for the intellectual foundations for Youth Challenge. At the time, I was up on Capitol Hill in transition to become the Comptroller, the Chief Financial Officer for the Defense Department. And I was one foot out and one foot not yet in, and all of a sudden, here come my friends from the guard and say, we got this deal called Guard Challenge. I went, oh gosh. Because I'd been living in this environment where people just show up and say, we need money for this, we need money for that. I was going to become the Chief Financial Officer and thought, I don't know about this. But there were some very important people who I respected enormously who were pushing it. And so honestly, it was on the basis of that, that I went along with it and we started putting it in the budget. I'm glad to know that I lived long enough to say I was wrong. You know, there are things in America that work. Right now, we celebrate things that don't work. And we make them everybody's headlines. And we don't spend enough time looking at things that really do work and why they work and what they do for us. And I think that's what we want to develop in this little conversation. You're looking at two people that have been more influential in shaping and advancing youth challenge than anybody. Now, Hugh, of course, was present at creation. He was on the commission that helped invent the idea of the concept of youth challenge. And the good general has been leading the guard, but was instrumental throughout in nurturing this program. And it takes, things just don't happen. Everything in the world around us started off as an idea in one person's mind. But you have to translate that into something that's real. So let's start, Hugh, let me ask you to begin. And to say, go back to when you were on this commission 20 years ago, you were thinking, 21 years ago, you were thinking about this, your vision then, and what has worked? And what would you like to potentially change now? Well, let me go back even beyond then, if you don't mind. You reach a certain age, you start reminiscing, and so you've got to indulge me on this. My interest in this whole issue of what we can learn from the military and how it's very powerful education and training models might be adapted dates back to the mid-1970s when I was a partner in an urban affairs consulting firm. And we got a grant from a very small foundation called its iconic foundation to examine the issue of why so many young African-American males, particularly, were locked out of the labor market. It was something called the dual labor market back then. And I always start with the research, but as soon as I read that and consume it, I want to know, OK, what are we going to do about it? And what we're going to do about it dawned on me based on my experiences growing up here in Washington DC when a number of my classmates would drop out of school. I'd run into them a couple years later, and they had joined the army. And these kids that we used to call knuckleheads and thugs were ramrod straight in their army uniforms full of purpose and raring to go. And I never served in the military, but I said something happened to them. The military did something with them and for them and to them. That was obviously very powerful. So in the mid-70s, we got the idea of wouldn't it be fascinating if the military would create a quasi-military youth corps for kids who had dropped out of school? We started shopping that idea in the mid-1970s, but it was a non-starter then because the country was coming out of the Vietnam War. And anything associated with the military and connected to civilian kids was just a non-starter. 15 years later, I joined the Rockefeller Foundation as vice president. I went to a conference in Stanford University. I'm telling this because it's very interesting how ideas blossom. I went to a conference in Stanford and a very dear friend of mine and a mentor by the name of Edmund Gordon, who is a great psychologist and an avowed pacifist, said in one of the panels, I think the conditions of kids growing up in cities are now so horrific, we need to consider conscripting them for their own good. And I said to myself, have I got a conscription idea for you? So I went down to the freezer, pulled out this idea that we tried to sell in the mid-1970s, thought it, put some fresh spices on it, and said, let me see if I can use my position now as vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation to help put this idea in play. Through a variety of contacts, including Larry Corv, your former contact colleague, I got an introduction to Bill Taylor here at CSIS. I was shopping for an institution that was deeply rooted in the defense community and that if it embraced this idea, that might have a chance to new. Because my view was that there was no way that an ostensibly progressive foundation like the Rockefeller Foundation would be able to make this happen. And Bill, anybody who knows him here is a very enthusiastic guy, very effusive. And we clicked right away. And so I said, I have the ability to write some checks. And he said, I want to create a study commission. And I said, we'll finance that study commission. And we teamed up CSIS with a group called Public Private Ventures, which was deeply involved in youth development programs. And that exercises after the races. Again, thanks to Larry Corv got an introduction to General Temple, went into the Pentagon. I'd never been in the Pentagon before. I told my wife, if I don't show up in five hours, send in the police to try to find me. I don't know what will happen. And in that meeting with the general was the fellow named Dan Donahue, who had dreamt of doing something like this. And General Temple shocked me when he said, as I mentioned, 10 minutes into it, I get it, we'll do it. And then he also said, we train young people to be soldiers, but we can train young people to be anything. And that's how powerful our systems were. And that confluence of the keen interests of, and he said, we'll do it. So we'll work with CSIS. We'll develop the model, we'll go up on Capitol Hill and get the funding from the subcommittee that oversees the Guard. And that's the dawn of the challenge program from my experience. I was fascinated by the idea of an entity like the Guard, which has both a domestic and a national defense focus. I was fascinated by the potential to operate at scale, to build systems and consistent delivery. Because one of the issues that we see in many programs is the uneven implementation, the live at the improv, the unstable funding bases and all that. And the idea that the Guard might take this on, offered a great deal of potential and does to this day. So it's been very exciting to watch. And I'm proud to claim just a little bit of parentage for it. But it's been very exciting to see how it has blossomed. And I've run into people from the challenge program all over the country and the enthusiasm and determination to make it work. This is another thing, is that the determination of the folks who are involved in this program and have that missionary zeal is something you don't find in a lot of education programs. I'm glad you brought that up, Hugh. And I'm glad you also mentioned the kind of unique quality of the Guard because it's a military organization, but it's family. I mean, it's us. It's community. It's the people that are every day around us, probably a third of them are policemen or firemen or maintenance people for the school buses and all that. They're in the fabric of making American society work. So giving them this mission was a genius idea. And Craig, you led this. You've been a guardsman your whole life. You've been championing the Guard. I'm sure when you first heard about it, you said, Jesus, and I don't need this now. I've got so many other things. Why this? How did you think about this when you first heard about it? Well, first of all, Dr. Hamry, thanks to UNCSIS and the Kim Wynn Cup and the entire team for hosting us today. I think I speak for all the prior chiefs of the National Guard. We're going back to Herb Temple, but John Conaway, Ed Baca, Russ Davis, and Steve Blum and myself, and now our new chief, Frank Grass, when I say this is a deeply seated value that we believe is one of our crown jewels in the National Guard archive. It is different when you come up in a state system that has both a state and federal mission to look at youth challenge and say, is that one of our core competencies? Especially in my case, as a fighter pilot, training to fight the former Soviet Union. But once you visit a youth challenge site and once you see the work that's done there, no matter what your job skill is in the National Guard, you know because of our deep roots, which you said so eloquently, are in our community and what John Conaway used to call the Community-Based National Defense Force. That's who we are, 376 years worth of it. It just makes sense to put it in our enterprise. And then as I was fortunate enough to come up through the bureau, spend time in the Pentagon, and see firsthand as chief our programs, which we have program directors here today and graduates, who you will hear from later, it only reinforces the value of the National Guard to our nation and to our states. The governors retain the right to be the commanders in chief. Therefore, that panel discussion we had earlier about the state piece of this, the governors are very interested in it. It just makes sense. You know, I spent a little bit of time in a seminary and I was a failed seminarian. But one concept that still dominates my own personal life is the idea of redemption. That you can take somebody that's broken and give them a second chance. And I think that's a lot of what this program is about. This constituency, this is not, this is not the favored constituency in American society. This is a constituency that struggles. Tough, strong headwinds. And yet that's who we're trying to work with. Yeah, one of the remarkable, one of the many remarkable things about the program and Dan and General Temple and many others have reminded me. The Guard and the architects of this program espouse the idea of developing the whole person long before that phrase entered into the lexicon of K-12 education. When you look at the eight program components of the Guard, it's the essence of social and emotional development, which people are beginning to talk about. The program focuses on getting kids up to snuff academically, but it also focuses on leadership, which everybody understands, but followership. What is that? Well, that's functioning in an organization, knowing that you're not always gonna be a top dog and anybody who's married knows that, anybody who's got a mother knows that, anybody who's got daughters knows that. But you've got to function in an environment where you have to produce, be productive and be part of a team. The elements of that focus around job skills, community service, civic responsibility. So there are many elements of the Guard program that contribute to the development of the young people. And then the Guard's course members who are sort of like drill sergeants are the ultimate mentors. Nobody thinks of them that way because of the image on television, but their job is to transform young people into successful young adults. So I think that actually, and I'm working on a book about this for Brookings, I think there's a lot that can be extracted from the way in which challenges are organized that could be helpful in civilian contexts where kids who have a hard time in traditional schools and for whom traditional schools just did just the design and support systems are not right. And it's a very powerful intervention. Dan once said to me, and this is a very vivid image, he said, you know, in essence what we do in the challenge programs, we've got the kids for about five months, we systematically, you're gonna love this and I hope nobody gets indigestion, we systematically freeze dry the brains. Then we go in and systematically scoop out all the bad stuff and we inject good stuff in it. He said, now I get it, now I get it. But it's a very powerful transformative experience and for kids who are having a hard time in life and a hard time in school and don't have the supports they need at home and in their communities, they need powerful transformative experiences and powerful, the second shift of adults who need to be part of the first shift working with these young people. But my, and I've only touched lightly on this, but I had a chance to see it a bit when I was in government. It's not just that you're putting them through a mold, it's that you're giving them a sense of their possibility, what they can become. What it takes, you have to earn it, but you can become that. And I think that's a powerful, powerful incentive for young people, that they're not worthless. They can be something. Craig, you deal with this all the time with guardsmen. You're taking people, these aren't not necessarily the winners in life and yet you turn them into winners. Well, you know, the advent of the all volunteer force created a whole new image of what being in the United States military was all about. Nobody forces anybody to do these jobs anymore. Conscription is a word that a lot of young people don't even understand anymore. And as Gail Dady and our board members know, there's no fences around the youth challenge academies. These kids can come and go as they want if they wanna check out. They can leave on their own accord. But the majority of these young men and women stay because they want this new adaptive structure built into their lives, because they missed it somewhere along the line. They want to grab it, they want to seize it. And for the foundation members who are here today, our goal is to try to take them from that point where they are successful and move them on into more successful job skills later on in life, but you're absolutely right. I remember Dan and I attended the first graduation ceremony for the first unit in the challenge program. And it was the Connecticut unit and it was held on the campus of the Coast Guard. And CNN came, it was a very big deal. And to see the kids who had dropped out of school, parading down to the front in their caps and gowns, hundreds and hundreds of parents and children and well-wishers there, saluting the kids who had been written off as having no hope. To see some fellows, I don't know where they came from, maybe from a nearby barber contingent of guys from the American Legion with the hats and everything, came now, I'm not a military guy, so you gotta give me some space on this. Came over and awarded top cadet citations to these kids. They had formed a course, they sang, I mean, there was a full blown commencement ceremony for kids who six months earlier had dropped out of school. The other interesting experience was Dan and I and a bunch of cadets went on the Montel Williams show. Montel cared deeply about this program, Navy Vet. And it was a typical staging thing. And at one point, off in the background offstage was a father who said, I never thought my son was gonna mount to nothing. And then the father comes out and there's this warm embrace between the father and the son. And it was just a purpose of the transformation is quite remarkable and it's the acknowledgement that if we invest in our young people, there's all sorts of enormous potential there. And but we've got to invest. Let me, there's such strong positive resonance between you. Let me try to get a little division here, but it's not, it's to draw, I think, a stronger point. You know, one of the early elements of resistance to this was that it was gonna be a farm league for military recruiting. And of course, a lot of my progressive friends really back up, you know, their back gets stiff and that sort of thing. Tell me, how did you internalize that? And Craig, how do you think about that? We really want young people to succeed. It really depends on where they wanna take themselves. And if they do choose, which less than 10% of our graduates have choose to go to the military, great, we love it. But that's not our purpose. Our purpose is to turn out wholesome citizens who understand the value of education and a desire to continue that. You know, I look, Mike Mullen was my boss for a while, former chairman of Joint Chiefs, and Mike used to always look at things in national security structure. And I look, as a former 38 year veteran, less than 1% of our citizenry in this great nation have the ability to serve now, the propensity to serve. Out of recruits, only one out of four young people today qualify to become a member of the United States military. Various reasons, drugs, they don't have a degree, they've gone astray. We have a national problem here that we talked about all day. I think about it in security terms. Others think about it in terms of relevance to our nation, but I really believe that youth challenge gives young people the chance for the second chance, but to succeed in our country's history and fabric. Hugh, how was your- Well, I just think when you think about the domestic side of the Guard, when it goes in to help put communities back together again after hurricanes or storms or tornadoes, they're not going in to recruit soldiers. They're going in pursuit of a domestic mission that the governor has asked them to do. So that's the hat that I think they have on when they're doing this. And the fascinating thing is, early on there probably was some doubt in the Pentagon about whether they should be doing this amongst some folks in the Pentagon. Probably some doubt in the education community, but it's been fascinating to see the members of the Guard who get involved in this become just real true believers. And in a sense of mission, we are going to get this done for the young people. And so that's why they're there. They're not doing this in order to recruit. They're doing it to help young people get turned on to productive lives. And that has overtaken any other concerns that I have. That still doesn't mean I probably have a lot more progressive friends than you do. And these are some hard conversations that have been going on. I mean, I've been in this conversation for 40 years. And my view is if the program works, let's not worry about this. And in some school system, for example, around the public military academies, which are like high schools that are patterned after military, there are people who object to that. But my view is when you've got a ratio of 10 applicants to one slot, the parents are speaking, the kids are speaking about what they want. And that needs to be respected. And the young people who are signing up for the challenge program are speaking. And if this is a powerful option for them, it ought to exist. I'm worried about where this is going to go in this land of sequester where we don't care about substance and it's only about the political posturing around budgets. Where, Craig, you're closer to this. You struggled with funding issues in the department. How do you think about that? I guess timing's everything. I retired on the 1st of November last year. This was before the word sequester was even out in public. So our budgets have been very sustainable thanks to support from Senator Landrieu and others, Congresswoman Napolitano. There are great supporters on the Hill. But it's all gonna come under scrutiny. Every dollar is gonna come on the table. And so I think the previous panel talked about the rigorous evaluation of the program and the statistics that show that this works. If we can continue, and we certainly always will open our doors, I speak for the former chiefs but even the current chief. We open our doors. Come look at us. If it isn't working and if we're not spending the money wisely, I think then we have to be held to account for it. Yeah, I don't live in Washington. So I- Don't brag. Don't be proud. I'm jumping on a train at four o'clock, I can't believe it. But I mean, I worry about that. And hopefully the sequester phenomenon is a short-term phenomenon and more rational budgeting will prevail. It is delightful to know that the folks at OMB are very close to the program and believe it and understand the power of the evidence. And certainly that's a great affirmation to have both the MDRC evaluation and the RAND study just as an aside, my wife works for MDRC and she didn't work on this study. And I remember telling her when I found out that they were gonna do the evaluation, I said, you know, this is my out-of-wedlock child. So don't come up with any insignificant findings on this. I can't. No, I don't, I don't. But it was exciting to see the results. And just to see, I mean, sometimes instinct affirmed by evidence is very, very powerful and anybody who sees the program and operation understands the power. It's not for everybody and not every young person can get through it. I'm not sure that high at that age would have gotten through it. But it's exciting to see the young people who wanna do it. I do think, as I mentioned earlier, I think there's a lot that can be gleaned from this that could be applied in education and financed in some innovative ways. I mean, yes, federal government and labor and all that. Bob Delfast made a very interesting point about the money that's not well spent on ninth grade retention. That's a pool of money. The states have spent a mother load of money on the criminal justice system and the juvenile justice system. That money can be repurposed because, you know, so many young people are headed that way if we don't intervene successfully. A lot of money is spent on trying to get folks who don't graduate from high college into GED or some other kinds of alternative services. If these are more effective, that's a potential source. And I think the key is, and this is why the RAND study is so important, if we don't figure this out, we'll spend multiples of the costs of these programs on the consequences later. Yeah, I read the cost-benefit analysis studies and I was very happily surprised. Frankly, I used to put a lot of budgets together for defense things and we wouldn't have had such strong cost-benefit analysis on some of that stuff. So it's a real testament, the fact that this is a program that's been well run and put itself through the rigor of being tested that way. And the guards deserve very high marks for this. But I have a sense that when programs get to be 20 years old, they start to lose the founder's impulse. The people that invent the idea want to sustain it, they step back and we don't necessarily transition this to a new leadership cadre to give them a sense it's their program. They've inherited it, it isn't necessarily theirs. What do we do? Is this an issue, Craig? Sure, I think it's an issue with any organism, organization that has to continue on beyond the visionaries. I give great credit to Gail and the board members in here who focus and continue to look for ways to improve what we can do for graduates. But we still have those five former chiefs that you started with Herb. And if Herb were here today, he would show you the passion that started this. If John Conaway were here, he'd be up here correcting me to 100%. The point is these gentlemen and the ladies who participate in this program are all in. They have been from the beginning and we will carry on. But that means we have to have a 21st century approach to this and that's gonna take the things we've learned about today in the panel discussion and the board and us and the chief of the bureau now to go forward and make improvement. I think also a way to do it if you're part of the expression is to present fresh challenges. The idea that challenge is beginning to work with adjudicated youth. There was an effort in Oklahoma some years ago to do that. I forget the project Bravo or something like that. Well, that's a whole population a bit tougher than the cross section and the challenge program. But if challenge as we know it is affected with those kids, that's a whole other funding stream arguably a lot cheaper if you can keep young people out of prison, get them out or get them out earlier. States save a lot of money, a lot of money. That can be a fresh funding stream for the application of the idea. And again, I think that there are ways in which the challenge approach could be used in creating different kinds of daytime educational institutions that could work. And this is where I also think that governors can step in if you've got populations of young people who are clearly not being served by schools as we know them and are out there floating in the disengaged community. Governors can step in and say, well the schools as we know them and love them don't work for those kids. So we at a state level are gonna take responsibility for that just as governors are taking responsibility for failing schools in some communities and what Paul did down in Louisiana creating new kinds of schools. I think states can exert a lot of leadership there filling voids. And frankly, liberating the schools that are wrestling with the kids are basically in the building to perform even better if there are more powerful alternatives. But the states can take some leadership there I think and bring their own funding streams and call upon the guard which has got these powerful systems and experience to bring to bear on those young people. You know, last, I guess it was earlier this week we had Frank Grass here who was the current chief. He is. And he on his own endorsed the youth challenge program. And it, so I'm very happy that it's continuing with this strong support from the top of the guard. I do think we need to find a way that we are communicating to the Congress to give them, I'm delighted that Senator Landry was here, but we need to find a broader base, I think in the Congress going forward. I mean, the half life and the house now is about nine years and the half life in the Senate's 11 years which means that we have fewer than 25% in either body probably down to 15% in the house that were around when this challenge was created. We've got a reeducation issue. That's part of what we're doing this for. Part of why we're capturing it on film. It's part of what we're trying to give all of you, you know, in your own mind the talking points of what's important to be sharing for this. Again, let me just ask you to, with Eddie, because we're at the hour when we need to pass on to the panel that's now coming and it will be the most exciting part in a way. But what's the vision that each of you now has? Where we are, this is a success. And we can be satisfied with it, we can grow it. We can build it. Just a little bit of an inspirational vision that you have for us. Well, I think there's a vision, there are a couple of ways of thinking about the vision. One is there is challenge. There are ways in which challenge, as we know it, as it's structured as a residential program can grow and should grow. And then there are lessons from challenge, implications of challenge that have the potential to influence how we think about young people who will never participate in a program like this. And I think we ought to consider those possibilities as well. What can we learn from it, glean from it that could be used in other settings to create other kinds of entities that are a service to kids? And that's the focus of the book. I do think there's a very powerful constituency for challenge. When I went to the Challenge Foundation gala, I was stunned by the number of governors. I don't want to call First Lady significant gubernatorial others, depending on the gender of the governor. Members of Congress who believe passionately in the program and they believe passionately in the program because everybody knows young people who've got an issue. Every politician has constituents who've got issues, nieces, nephews, et cetera. So that can be marshaled. There is no K-12 education program I know of that could stay to gala like the one that the Challenge Foundation stages with that kind of zeal reflected in that room with several thousand people who are passionate. And we're governors and first, whatever's traipse in and talk about the program and we're NASCAR drivers too. So there's a powerful base there and a powerful story to tell. And there was once more bipartisan, vocal bipartisan support. I remember going to one of these dinners in Washington and I walked up to President Clinton and introduced myself even to who I was. I said, I've got a connection with the Challenge Program. He lit up like a light bulb, he loved the program. Then Trent Lott was there and I'm not a Republican but I walked up to him and said, I've got a connection with the Challenge, he lit up like a light bulb. So their political people across the aisle have constituents who need challenge and that needs to be marshaled in some way. Thanks again for the opportunity to be here. I think I can give credit to Gail and the board for that Gaila, they do a great job. And we just recently did a new vision and Dodie did a new strategic plan for us because we have to be ready now for the next challenge that's out in front of us. But quite frankly, to bring back the memory of Congressman Sonny Montgomery who I think was there at the birth. Yes, he was the chair. And you take that passion and bring it to modern day we'll be just fine. And your National Guard will continue to support as you saw in Frank Grassley for our chief whatever endeavors that we can do and we're looking for new and better ways to take young men and women beyond the initial challenge experience. I think that's our goal. You know, our country's got a lot of problems these days and the world has a lot of problems but if we each try to find one within our grasp to fix it, every person in the world did that we could solve them. But you need a vehicle for that. You need something that can help amplify your own personal passion to make a change in the world. I think you've challenged that. I want to thank you both for making it possible. Would you all with your applause, please thank them for this remarkable. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for your vision. Thanks Dr. Hammer. I appreciate it very much.