For more than 35 years I have been involved in creating programs to support our youth. It started when I took my 15 year old brother away from our parents. I was only 24.
He was adopted by my parents when he was five and by the time he was 15 my mother had redefined abuse to the point I was afraid for how he would turn out if he staying in the house with her. Odd my parents never fought me on taking him. It wasn’t even a discussion.
I often thought how crazy I was for thinking I could handle a 15-year-old. He was heady from his new found freedom and pushed every limit he could think of, but I set up some pretty simple guidelines. Break the rules, here’s the consequences. And most of the time he was pretty good about not pushing me too far.
Together we created Youth Enterprises and he and his closest 100 friends from school ventured out to Chapman town and decided to do a clean up project. It was amazing. Their reward was a concert I organized to raise funds to support more activities.
It was a great success and my first venture into fund raising was to be the beginning of a life long interest in making a change in the world I lived in.