Opportunity. Education. Success.

Pam Brookshire, CANI's Vice President of Community Services, wrote this post for Inside CANI. 

It’s graduation season. If you're like me, you've probably been receiving invitations for ceremonies and parties to celebrate the success of the students in your lives. These invitations make me think about my 17-year old daughter who is a junior in high school. She’s in the beginning stages of choosing a university. Though which school she will attend is still unknown, what is known and expected is that she’ll go to college and attain a four-year degree. That’s been the expectation since she was a minute old and her father and I have worked hard to ensure she has the opportunity.

I juxtapose her situation with the young people in our JAG program. (JAG stands for Jobs for America’s Graduates). Funded and supported by Northeast Indiana Works, CANI employs JAG Specialists who work with high school juniors and seniors who are in danger of not graduating from high school. This year CANI is working with 560 students in 14 high schools across northeastern and north central Indiana.

There are a myriad of reasons why students in the JAG program are at risk of not graduating: lack of credits, poor attendance, etc. JAG is a class that the students take, just like math and English. The CANI JAG Specialists lead the class and work with each student to first, get them to graduation and second, lead them to a career goal and a plan to get there.

Unlike my daughter, many of these children grow up without the expectation or a dream of going to college. Many of them live in poverty, with all the stress and chaos it brings. Some of them are already parents themselves or have parents who were too young when they were born. Many of their parents and grandparents never went to college and may not understand the value of an education. In our country, the quickest, surest path to poverty is to become a teenage parent and/or drop out of high school. The JAG program aims to curtail poverty by helping students avoid these causes of it.

With the JAG program, students are provided a multitude of experiences, a support system, and the tools to achieve a successful post-secondary career. The JAG Specialists work hard to assess each student and then develop a plan to get and keep them on track to graduation. They do this through classroom instruction and one-on-one mentoring.

The Specialists do all they can to inspire these kids to find their calling and pursue it. There are classroom speakers, college fairs, college visits, job shadows, and paid internships during the summer. When students discover a career that they wish to pursue, the JAG Specialists help them find the right college and ways to pay for it. Not every JAG participant goes to college, by choice or anything else. Many go right to work and even more join the military. Once the students graduate, the JAG Specialists provide one year of follow up to ensure that they have all the support they need to remain on their paths.

JAG not only focuses on education, it provides opportunities to develop leadership and employment skills. There are two events each year where students improve their public

CANI JAG student Emari Carroll from Marion High
School accepts an award from Commissioner
Scott Sanders of the Indiana Department
of Workforce Development.

speaking, writing, interviewing, marketing, and leadership skills. The students learn different styles of leadership and participate in team-building activities with the Indiana National Guard. During the Career Development Conference (CDC), students from each high school compete against one another for the chance to move on to the state level. This year, CANI’s JAG students earned eight awards at the state competition!

As an anti-poverty advocate for 27 years, JAG is one of my favorite programs. For one, JAG truly addresses one of the main causes of poverty: lack of a high school diploma and post-secondary education. Second, JAG provides opportunities for young people to aspire to something and take control of their futures. JAG changes lives in ways that other anti-poverty programs are not able to because it helps young people early in their adult lives. The success is evident in the numbers. In the 2012 - 2013 school-year, students in the JAG program achieved a 92 % graduation rate and a 76 % full time job and military placement rate!

How can you help? Advocate for additional funding at the state and federal levels and donate to CANI directly. Governor Mike Pence has taken a serious interest in JAG and has provided state funding to all JAG programs in Indiana. This funding allowed CANI to go from 9 high schools to 14, 360 kids to 560. However, there are a lot more students out there that need what the JAG program offers.

My heart breaks for all the young people in our state who don’t have any dreams or hope for their futures. I wish that every child had the support and means to achieve their career goals as my daughter does. But that isn’t the reality - yet. Until then, I’ll watch with pride and honor as the 560 students in the current CANI JAG program graduate high school and work toward making their dreams come true.

It's That Time of Year Again!

If you have kids, you know what time it is – it’s back to school time! Most kids are not that happy to be ending their summer vacation and getting back to “work”. Many parents, on the other hand, are just a little happy to get their kids out of their hair for a while each day. (It is no different in my household!) But all kidding aside, I am also excited that my kids get to go back to school to continue their education.

We all know the importance of education. Studies show that children develop 85% of their intellect, personality, and skills by age 5. Early childhood education has a profound impact on the development of children and who they will become as adults.

This is why I’m so proud of CANI’s Head Start program. Because each and every year, we are working with about 800 children between 3 and 5 years old, setting them on the path of lifelong learning.

Head Start is a truly comprehensive preschool program. Our teachers do an excellent job preparing children for kindergarten and the years beyond. But we also focus on the health and nutrition of the children, which are important factors in their early formation. Likewise, we work closely with the families of our children, because we know that a child’s most important teacher is his or her parents.

Besides early childhood education, decisions that young people make in high school have a profound impact on their adulthood. The two most important indicators of poverty among those that CANI serves are education level and single parenthood. Those with a college degree or equivalent credential earn about twice as much annually as those with only a high school diploma. The gap only widens for those without a high school education. And while single parenthood occurs for a number of reasons, one reason is young women having children while still in high school.

Working with youth is critical to CANI’s mission, which is why I’m so pleased that CANI now has the JAG program (Jobs for America’s Graduates.) This year we will work with approximately 350 youth in 9 high schools throughout our region. The goal of the program is to work with students to help them stay in school, access post-secondary education, and secure quality entry-level jobs that lead to career opportunities.

So as our community goes back to school, CANI is going back to school as well. I love that we can have such a great impact on young people through Head Start and JAG. To learn more about these programs, check out our web site, www.canihelp.org.