Youth Challenge Meeting The Needs Of At-Risk Youth

It’s a national problem that continues to rattle experts in education and social services. How do you help at-risk youth who are failing in a traditional educational and social structure?

 

- Gale Horton Gay

While others are trying to figure it out, one organization has had several decades of success. The National Guard’s Youth ChalleNGe Program is in its 23rd year of redirecting the paths of young people who have dropped out of school and are facing an uncertain future.

Begun in 1993 through an act of Congress as a two year pilot program, Youth ChalleNGe showed such positive results that it was expanded, and now there are 40 academies in 28 states across America. The programs are administered by the National Guard and financially supported by the federal government at 75 percent and 25 percent by state government.

More than 149,000 young people have graduated from the program since it began. The 2015 Freestate ChalleNGe Academy in Aberdeen, MD, has an operational cost of $20,331 per cadet with a graduation target of 200 cadets per year. In 2015 it nearly met its goal, with 181 cadets graduating.