B Fulfilled

I'm sitting in class in Boston and the class is number 3 of a 6 part series (who knows if I'll ever finish it all) and everytime I go to these things I'm super-charged. This is the place that focuses me because in all the hussel and bussel of school and all that there are times that I loose sight of what I really am working for.

Well, this class is all about aftercare. Models that work, intake and assessment, and how to affectively work with kids that get out of lock up. It's really cool because in the classroom with me are 26 different classmates, we represet a variety of states from east to west coast (literally) and we work with as chaplins, residential care providers, minstry workers (yes, one YFC person), former convicts, former juvenile delinquents, a whole sort of characters. And the beautiful thing is all these people that i'm stting in the room with brings different htings to the table and we just give and take what we have, pooling our resources, and getting better results.

We talked yesterday about collaboration. This is collaboration. Straight Ahead Ministries (SAM) has a great model that was fedearlly funded/studied for three years with nearly $700,000 in funding. They have reduced recidivism (repeat offending, in this case juvneile offenders) from 85% to 15% and brought the murder rate down to less than 5 per year in six years. This is in a city of 89,000 and 2,000 gang members from four rival gangs (Bloods, Crips, Soldiers, and Latin Kings - I think that was the fourth one). Its really cool because they have success with nearly every single kid they work with.

So, back to my life... the last class I went to (in January) there were a few people who really encouraged me and one thing that was said more than once to me was, "I could see you starting your own ministry...your own program...". I don't know about that but...I'm sure I could.

Okay, so I'm fulfulled. It's great to be fulfilled (and yes, I have my B coffee cup with me) :).