|
Mentoring At-Risk Kids—KIDS HOPE USA’s Successful Strategy
by Bert Ghezzi
When pastor Paul Miller first became a Kids Hope USA mentor to a child named Simon, the boy was in such frequent fights that
he had a nearly permanent place in the principal’s office. Simon’s life has begun to change in the two-and-a-half
years that he’s met with Miller, pastor of Covenant Life Church in Grand Haven, Michigan.
“Sometimes we go over his homework, sometimes we play games or read books, mostly we just talk,” Miller says.
“The principal told me that Simon has done a complete about-face in his respect for his peers, for authority, and for
himself. All I do is show up each week. I believe in him and pay attention to him. Every week we end our time together the
same way: I tell Simon he is a good kid, and he tells me he will do his best. I am amazed how God uses that hour in such big
ways.”
Virgil Gulker developed Kids Hope to help at-risk children in public schools. Gulker asked police, teachers, clergy, and social
workers what the church could do for at-risk kids, many of whom live in impoverished and single-parent households. The resounding
answer: What children need most is a stable relationship with a caring adult.
Gulker connects a church with a neighboring elementary school, and church members become one-on-one mentors to at-risk students.
A mentor spends one hour a week with a child—tutoring, helping with homework, playing, or just visiting. But the underlying
purpose of the hour is to create a friendship with an adult that brings consistency to a child’s life.
Gulker started Kids Hope in 1995 with three churches and schools in southwestern Michigan. Today 217 programs in 27 states
provide mentors to about 3,800 children. In nine school districts, all public elementary schools are matched with Kids Hope
churches, and seven school districts have requested a church for every school. The organization grows consistently, adding
about two programs each month. Kids Hope plans to have 5,000 churches serving 100,000 children by 2010.
Fight or flight
Mentoring relationships transform children. Consider Annie, a student in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who has five family members
in prison. When school began last year, Annie was withdrawn and doing very little school work. After four months with a mentor,
she is performing above the class average in all subjects.
“Principals tell us that between 98 and 100 percent of students in these adult-child relationships show significant
improvement in academic performance and attitude,” Gulker says.
A consistent and nurturing relationship with a mentor fosters a child’s ability to learn. “Research shows that
children in unstable environments are left with two physiological responses: fight or flight,” says Joseph Loconte,
a fellow of the Heritage Foundation. “Only emotional stability allows brain function to improve and learning to take
place.”
Educators such as Carmen Hannah, principal of Van Raalte Elementary School in Holland, Michigan, say that mentoring also helps
children stop bad behavior. Says Hannah, whose school has the largest Kids Hope program in the nation: “The pride our
students show in their work and their increased motivation for learning gives them so much confidence that they no longer
need to fool around or be belligerent to get their need for attention fulfilled.”
Gulker likes to tell the story of Jason, a five-year-old kindergartner who had been arrested 25 times for arson. Jason had
attended a correctional school for pyromaniacs, but he continued to set fires. “The boy is just searching for proof
that someone cares about him,” said the principal. A year later the principal and the pastor of the church offering
Kids Hope at his school invited Gulker to speak to other local principals. He opened by asking about the young arsonist.
“That child is in our Kids Hope program,” said the principal.
“What?” asked the pastor, “Who in my church is working with him?”
“You are,” said the principal, “and you have changed his life.”
Not knowing the worst about the boy he befriended, the mentor had expected the best and got it. Jason is now a well-adjusted
member of his class and an excellent student.
Kids Hope’s strongest champions are principals and teachers who see how it offers a fresh start to disadvantaged children.
Thirteen principals in Terre Haute, Indiana, recently asked 150 pastors to provide mentors for their schools.
Demanding commitment
Educators say the program builds faithfulness and stability among mentors and students. “My children face abandonment
issues constantly, says Glenda O’Banion, a school principal in Hammond, Louisiana, “and they’ve been abandoned
by people who said ‘We care.’ I’m an old lady, and I’ve been in education for 30 years. This is the
first program I’ve seen carry through on all the principles they first stated they would do. I’ve never seen anything
like this.” She wants mentors for 300 of the 412 poor kids in her school.
“We’re not interested in good intentions,” Gulker says. “We put extraordinary emphasis on the commitment
the church needs to make to the child.”
A church participating in Kids Hope must:
• Restrict its outreach to one public elementary school in its neighborhood.
• Provide the school with at least ten mentors and recruit more mentors as the program develops. Mentors undergo an
eight-step screening, including a criminal history check.
• Involve its pastor as a mentor or prayer partner.
• Hire a half-time program director onto the church staff. Kids Hope’s national office trains the director, who
in turn trains mentors and prayer partners. Smaller churches that cannot afford a paid position give their directors a modest
stipend or honorarium.
• Respect the separation of church and state. The national organization trains mentors to understand that they may not
evangelize on school grounds. The organization respects the school administrators’ obligation to enforce church-state
separation.
This last requirement, however, does not prevent Kids Hope church members from sharing their faith with children and their
families. With parents’ permission, a mentor may invite a child to events and activities at the church. A mentor who
shows the love of Christ at the school is free to speak about God at church. Kids Hope directors advise school administrators
that evangelism may occur in church settings.
The church designates a behind-the-scenes prayer partner for each mentor-child relationship. “While prayer is not allowed
in public schools,” says Gulker, “Kids Hope has 3,800 prayer partners infusing schools with prayer each week.”
Churches are discovering that caring for kids opens the way for reaching their parents and siblings. Consider the spiritual
impact on Colton, a six-year-old first-grader, and Susan, his mom. The boy had been abused by a disappearing dad and suffered
with Attention Deficit Disorder. Calvin Christian Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan, paired Colton with Herk Bos, a retired
man. The relationship affected both of their lives, but after five years, Bos died. Now in seventh grade, Colton wrote this
memorial to honor him:
“Mr. Bos was not only my mentor but my best friend! Some of my favorite memories are when we visited his childhood farm
so he could show me where he fished as a child. He taught me how to fillet a fish, set a swivel hook, and how to bait a crawfish.
. . . He taught me to be a master gardener but most importantly to love and trust in the lord with all my heart!”
Herk Bos’s care persuaded Susan, Colton’s mother, to accept Christ and to join the church. Recently she helped
establish a Bible study that attracts a dozen Kids Hope moms to church every Wednesday.
“Despite compelling evidence that most people accept Christ by age 18,” says Gulker, “many churches continue
to put the bulk of their efforts in programs for people 20 or older. But by reaching at-risk children Kids Hope gives churches
a proven strategy and a relational platform to reach their neighbors in the name of Christ.”
For more information on Kids Hope, visit www.kidshopeusa.com or call 866.546.3580.
© Copyright 2009 by Bert Ghezzi
Calling a Child by Name: An interview with Virgil Gulker.
Interviewed by Bert Ghezzi
How do you respond to the claim that the real problem in our schools is that God is no longer welcome there?
I don’t think any question or issue has frustrated me more than this one. He has not left. We have. I honestly believe
that God roams the hallways of America’s public schools looking for us. He longs for us to be Jesus-with-skin-on for
these children. If God is in fact not welcome in these schools, why is it that 60 percent of requests for Kids Hope programs
nationwide now come not from churches but from public school personnel? They look for that organization in their community
that has the word love in its mission statement and they find it in the local church.
How do you explain why at-risk kids improve their learning skills so quickly after they receive a mentor?
We have discovered that in order to meet the academic needs of these children we must first meet their emotional and social
needs. As we give them increased self-confidence and self-esteem, they are almost automatically empowered to learn.
As you introduce love and nurture into the lives of at-risk children, they begin to learn almost instantaneously. Our record
is twelve minutes for Nathan, a child who had not participated in any classroom activity for two and a half years. Suddenly,
after just meeting his mentor, the boy would not put his hand down. When asked what he had done to accomplish this extraordinary
change, the mentor reported that he had said only two things: “Nathan, I’m happy to be with you today” and
“Nathan, I think we’re going to be really good friends.” By touching the heart of this child, in a matter
of minutes he was able to accomplish significant change in the mind of the child.
Of the Kids Hope success stories, which one has moved you most?
I am always moved by the majesty and power of a mentor’s simply addressing a child by name. One that I will never forget
occurred recently in Houston, Texas. At their first session, a mentor asked a child what she would like to be called. The
little girl was so lacking in self-esteem that she could not even look into the mentor’s eyes. She said, “Maybe
you could call me what other people call me.”
“What do they call you?” asked the mentor.
“They call me Idiot.”
The mentor responded by calling the child Roxanne, her real name. And each week she showered the girl with names she had never
heard: awesome, wonderful, special, smart, pretty. And then the one name that touched the child: “Roxanne, will you
be my friend?”
© Copyright 2009 by Bert Ghezzi
|
