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Completing a National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is a transformative experience. Cadets all enter the program voluntarily, but bring with them with a variety of motivations: to make up school credits, get “cool” military training or earn a second chance after burning bridges with behavioral problems, to name a few.
The ChalleNGe cadre and staff, though, aren’t just interested in the cadets’ personal goals: They set out to change cadets’ whole outlook, and giving back to their communities is part of that transformative process.
“Cadets become motivated during the ChalleNGe program to become better citizens, and service to community is part of that eye-opening experience,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Denise Varner, director of the Sunburst Youth ChalleNGe Academy in Los Alamitos, California. “This is the first opportunity that many of our cadets have had to do something positive in their community and reap the rewards – reap the gratitude of their neighbors – which further instills their desire to help others.”
The 40 ChalleNGe programs in 30 states and territories welcome high school dropouts and at-risk teens for a 22-week residential program that promotes the values of discipline, hard work, academic excellence and caring for your community. Service to community is a vital part of each cadet’s growth, and every cadet contributes at least 40 hours during the ChalleNGe program’s residential phase.
Cadets at the Puerto Rico ChalleNGe Academy, for example, have volunteered to perform maintenance, gardening and painting at public schools, municipal facilities and low-income elderly families’ homes, and they have spent quality time at a children’s home.
“Out of all of the community service activities, the one I most enjoyed was at the homes of the elderly people,” said cadet Kevin Morales Alejandro. “Besides the help [we gave them], seeing the happiness in their faces as we danced, sang and played dominoes with them, it just filled me with joy. It’s an experience that I would repeat over and over again.”
Alejandro’s experience was just one of thousands like it in October for cadets in ChalleNGe programs all over the country, which organized the ChalleNGe program’s inaugural National Day of Service this year on Oct. 23. The nationwide push was the brainchild of Sunburst’s Warrant Officer 1 (CA) Rochelle Sonza, who said she wants to bring attention to the good work the ChalleNGe program is doing, both for communities and cadets.
“We want to shine a light on how these kids give back, because service alone changes communities, and it changes the kids to know they are doing something good,” said Sonza, Sunburst’s community outreach coordinator. “Every service we do stems from compassion, and there is meaning behind it. So the kids can walk away understanding who they are helping and the impact they are making, and how to ‘be the change’ for their community simply by caring.”
Sonza has worked at Sunburst for nearly 10 years, and she has seen firsthand the dramatic, lasting effects the ChalleNGe program has on youths. The program’s tremendous success is the reason California is preparing to open its third Youth ChalleNGe academy this winter in Lathrop, giving the Cal Guard a ChalleNGe academy in Northern, Central and Southern California.
Meanwhile, many states still do not have a single ChalleNGe academy.
“When you really think about it, why doesn’t every state have a ChalleNGe academy? Because they don’t know who we are,” Sonza said. “We need local community support in addition to congressional support … and we can be an unstoppable force.”
Establishing a ChalleNGe National Day of Service, similar to the law enforcement community’s National Night Out, will hopefully generate enough awareness that people outside the program will recognize Oct. 23 as the ChalleNGe Day of Service in years to come, she said. Oct. 23 was chosen because President George H.W. Bush signed legislation establishing the ChalleNGe program on that date in 1992.
Social media posts about the National Day of Service are marked with #ChalleNGe4ChaNGe.
Sonza said new cadets don’t fully understand the value in performing service until they actually get into the community and do it. But once they pitch in to help others, they end up loving the experience.
“[Service to community] made me realize that some people have it worse off than others, and there are also people who are willing to help, which is really a great thing,” said cadet Garrett Wise, 16, from the Arkansas ChalleNGe Academy, who recently helped out at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore. “It made me want to help where I can and do as much as I possibly can, and it made me have a good feeling about what we were doing.”
| Date Taken: | 11.29.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 11.29.2016 17:20 |
| Story ID: | 215944 |
| Location: | LOS ALAMITOS, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 478 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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