Our Programs
Year One: Step Up
The initial program begins with careful screening and selection of both youth participants and adult mentors. After a parent/youth/mentor orientation and initial training, the program is launched with an intensive, four-day residential course attended by youth, their mentors and a team of life-skills coaches. Throughout the following year, mentors contact their youth at least once a week. There are two monthly group sessions for all youth and their mentors, facilitated by CCPY leaders. In addition, on-going coaching and training is provided to mentors once per month. Parents also attend a support and education program led by trained course leaders. Life-skills coaching is available to youth, parents and mentors as requested or required. 
Year Two: Step Ahead
Youth take more responsibility for designing their own programs. While youth continue to have the option of working with mentors, there is less structure to this year. Youth attend monthly meetings, set goals, report progress and step ahead together. In building a community, youth begin to support themselves in their growth.
Year Three: Step Beyond
In this year, graduates from the second-year program begin to give back. In partnership with the Enlace Program college students and CCPY, teens learn and practice leadership skills. Youth have the opportunity to participate in launch-course activities for other troubled teens beginning their first year in the program, attend monthly meetings, give and receive peer-coaching, and participate in fundraising efforts. The methods at the heart of our highly structured programs, CCPY and GPY's approach is unique in several respects:
- Our youth choose to participate. They are not required to participate by their schools or parents.
- The curriculum is designed to reconnect youth to a sense of responsibility and vision for their lives. It is based on personal re-direction, exploring and modeling paradigms, as well as ropes/challenge-course work.
- We provide in-depth training for adult volunteers, teachers and parents who participate in each program. The impact and level of commitment that the volunteers make to each program is extraordinary.
CCPY’s programs do not seek for adults to “do for” or “fix” youth. Adult modeling of authenticity, honesty, openness and dedication to personal growth follows our belief that children will only “do what we do” and not what we say or tell them to do. Staff, youth peer-leaders and volunteers engage with youth in putting the cornerstones into practice in their lives.
CCPY Community Cornerstones
- Accountability – Being responsible for our own actions. We can choose our own actions instead of responding to the circumstances around us. Ultimately, we are responsible for who we are, and who we become.
- Possibility – Opening our vision to see beyond our circumstances to what is possible for our lives without limits. Setting inspiring goals for ourselves that challenge us, make us stretch, and help us to reach our potential.
- Commitment – Demonstrate commitment by the practice of giving and keeping our word to ourselves and to others.
- Community – Support each other in: Honoring the other cornerstones; reaching for our goals; holding each other accountable for our actions; giving as well as receiving support, keeping our commitments to ourselves and others.
Through caring, training, modeling and practice, CCPY allows for the transformation of even our most challenged youth’s view of their future and personal role in the community. Their perspective shifts from being a victim of circumstance, to being self-reliant and responsible for their lives. They do this by experiencing they are capable, learning to set inspiring goals, following-through pursuing those goals, and making course adjustments along the way. This transformation prepares them to lead fulfilling, responsible lives, and contributing to the greater community.