ARLINGTON, Va., - The scene is the same as at any high school or college around the country: bright, young faces in caps and gowns celebrating graduation as family and friends look on, smiling and crying.
More than 4,000 cadets in the National Guard’s Youth ChalleNGe program in 28 states around country will also graduate this month.
The program provides a means for “at risk” youth to earn their General Equivalency Degree, or high school diploma.
“Graduation is a big, giant milestone for them,” said Joe Padilla, the program manager for the ChalleNGe program here at the National Guard Bureau. “All of them were high school dropouts or expellees at one time, and prior to coming to the program they often really hadn’t experienced any type of success, especially on the academic side.”
The program, which started in 1993, will see roughly another 4,000 graduates in December, which will bring the total number of graduates since the program’s inception to 100,000.
“It’s an important milestone just because it’s 100,000 kids … who were given a second chance to get their life back on track,” said Padilla. “So, you’ve got 100,000 people there who are now doing well and being productive citizens back in their communities or serving in the military or doing all kinds of great things they weren’t doing prior.”
Still, said Padilla, 100,000 is a small number.
“If you compare it to the high school dropout problem in the United States, there’s over a million kids that drop out of school every year,” he said. “So, 100,000 graduates over roughly 20 years is not even a drop in the bucket. But, that doesn’t mean that it’s not significant … .”
However, because of the dropout problem there is still a need for a program.
“Last year, we graduated about 7,600 kids or so and we have over twice that many apply for the program,” he said. “So, there is a need out there.”
The 17-month program is broken down into roughly five-month residential and 12-month post-residential phases.
During the residential phase, participants are required to do physical training each day, go to school as well as work on community service projects, all-the-while under the guidance of the civilian staff and military cadre of the program.
“It’s a quasi-military environment,” said Padilla. “So, they get up at 5:30 in the morning, and they do their PT. They come back and they clean up their living area because they are living in platoon-sized barracks. From there, they have breakfast and then off to school.”
The school may be a bit different from the schools these cadets left behind.
“It’s not the school they were used to before coming to the program,” said Padilla. “They are actually having to apply themselves because the classes are smaller and therefore the teachers have more time to spend with them on a one-on-one basis, and if they are choosing to not apply themselves, they’ve got the cadre outside that can take them out and (motivate them) and boom, they’re back in school.”
And that is one of the reasons for the success of the program, said Padilla.
“They’re not dumb kids at all, they’ve just never applied themselves, and they never knew what it was to be successful and that’s what happens in the classroom,” he said. “That’s why we have such an outstanding GED or high school attainment rate, because they blossom in the classroom.”
Academics, however, are only part of it. Service to community is another aspect and as part of the program participants are required to accomplish 40 hours of community service, said Padilla.
“They spend most of their day in school and at the end of the school day they do some service-to-community projects, which can be tutoring at a local elementary school, they can be working at a local park or something of that nature giving back,” said Padilla, adding that weekends see participants working on service projects or attending trips that add to the educational experience.
“They are busy all the time,” he said. “That’s why it’s called ChalleNGe. It’s not easy.”
And that’s only the first five and-a-half months of the program.
“The kids that graduate then have a 12-month post-residential phase where they are being mentored and tracked by case managers to make sure they are being productive and if they’re not then we go back and find out what the issue might be and try and fix it.”
Upon graduating to the post-residential phase, each participant has formulated a post-residential plan as well as identified an adult mentor to work with while implementing that plan.
“While they are in that particular phase of the program they are mentored by a caring adult that they’ve selected themselves,” said Padilla. “They go down that road for the next 12 months and hopefully everything is going well (and) that young man or young lady is going back to school, they’re getting a job, some choose to join the military and some choose to do a combination (of those three). We want them to be productively placed.”
The post-residential portion is one of the things that differentiates the program from other, similar ‘boot camp”-type programs.
“You have programs like the “boot camps,” and we hate being called a boot camp because we’re not, but a boot camp will take a young man or a young lady and spend six to eight weeks with them and teach them how to march, how to say ‘Yes Sir, no Sir’ and then send them back out to the community and say, ‘OK, you’re a changed person.” said Padilla. “It’s doesn’t work that way. You’ve got change the attitudes, you’ve got to change the behaviors, you’ve got to change the ethics and all that stuff on how you see life and how you should conduct yourself in your community.”
Mentorship is the key.
“All that work that was done on-site by the staff, if there is no caring adult out there to help that young man or young lady through those rough times, and they will happen,” he said. “It’s not going to be all peaches and cream when you graduate and we all know that. And that’s the reason we have a mentor and that’s why our program is unique when it comes to that.”
As the program nears 100,000 graduates, Padilla said that it has come a long way since 1993. The program started with 10 sites across the country and now has 32 sites in 28 states and one territory.
The goal is to have about 50 program sites across the United States, and “that would give every kid that wants the opportunity to attend the Challenge program to do so,” said Padilla.
The program’s value is easy to see, said Padilla.
“Our graduation rate is such that the bang for the dollar is fantastic,” he said, adding that often, those who dropout from high school may continue on a downward spiral that could possibly end with incarceration.
Compared to jail time, said Padilla, the program is a greater value.
“The program costs $17,000, on average, per kid to get him or her through the program for those 17 months,” he said. “To be incarcerated, (it costs) $40,000 to $45,000 a year and there is no productivity coming back except maybe license plates. It’s not the same as having a productive citizen out there who is a taxpayer or serving their community in a positive manner.”
But the ultimate success of the program comes from those who attend.
“It’s a fantastic event to go to a Challenge graduation and see the transformation in these kids,” said Padilla. “It only happened because of the commitment the kids had to wanting to change their lives.”