TEEN LEADERSHIP CENTER

PURPOSE:

Today, we have in our society several programs directed at treatment of various youth crisis. However, this “treatment” approach is not United Christian Charities directive nor is our highest hope for American youth. It is our purpose to provide a provable alternative that will encourage our youth – not just for survival, but to rejoice that they are on earth to live in the image of God.

Our approach to a self-evident problem within our society is not one of treatment after the fact, but one that is designed to feed into our society, youth with a mission of leadership and with the humility, discipline, self-confidence, moral stability, and basic work ethic to merit the reins of leadership.

JUSTIFICATION FOR THE TEEN LEADERSHIP CENTERS:

The rationale for UCC’s implementation of a “youth-oriented development program” is very apparent. It is based upon the steady decline of the moral application of our youth and the steady increase of such final results of misdirected lives in chemical dependency, premarital pregnancies, and teenage suicide.

We believe the proposal, to be simple and effective, a program that will meet the needs of our changing society. A number of contributing factors can be blamed for the steady decline in the achievement levels of our youth. However, one of the most critical is one without human blame. For several years, our nation and the world have been going through a psychological and geographical upheaval. We are finding ourselves changing from a basic agrarian and definable industrial society to an indefinable service/knowledge-oriented society. The effects of this change are catastrophic on our youth since it has removed from them the central figure of parents to teach hands-open skills. Thus, we see the removal from our society of method of teaching basic skills which enforces personality development for our youth.

In years past, with our decentralized society, our youth could visually and practically be taught the basic skills of physical labor and personal achievement through show-and-tell procedures of the father and mother with son or daughter, in contrast to today when most jobs cannot be explained or shown at an elementary level. In times past, a father could not only tell his son or daughter what he did, but he could show them. Today, fathers cannot easily explain what they do and most often cannot show their children what they do, thus the son or daughter has little or no elementary entry level to basic skills to enhance their personality growth.

As a result, we have reduced the all-important factor of character, skill, and in many cases, basic life survival training to an impartial mass trainer who has little or no capabilities of individual personality training: our public school system. Our public school system was not, and is not designed or capable of constructively handling this basic youth training job.

We have taught our children to want material things without providing the physical, mental and moral skills to achieve their desires. The resulting effect are that by the time our youth reach their teen years, the fears of not being able to attain their material wants drives many into the lifestyle so prevalent and on the increase today of drugs, alcohol abuse, drop-outs, run away, etc.

United Christian Charities in studying the problem and seeking answers has found what we believe to be a workable program and philosophy to deal with this growing need.

TEEN LEADERSHIP CENTER SOLUTION:

We wish to turn a double negative into a positive. Today we have a problem with teaching our youth. Today, our farm population is in a state of change. We do not utilize the multitude of small and medium-sized farms of yesteryear. We have tens of thousands of farms that are going bankrupt with the owners beyond the years of physical labor of farming and wishing to dispose of their farming interests. We feel that this back-to-nature environment can provide the ideal physical locations needed to support our goals.

Then, of course, our youth need teachers of basic skills who will enhance personality growth. Second, we need this healthy environment in which to teach these basic skills. Third, we need the finances to implement the programs.