Kids Hope USA

HS #47 2019.6.13

Kids Hope USA

A while back I learned how elephants are trained in rural Thailand. Young elephants are chained to a stake pounded deep into the ground. The youngster will pull for several days until finally giving up. With this experience deep in mind, the adult (weighing up to 10,000 pounds) will remain in place when attached to a small stake it could easily pop out with a single tug. 

Parents who recently brought their precocious preteen to me for some mathematical guidance recounted another interesting natural phenomena. When the University of Arizona designed and built the enclosed, self-contained biosphere in 1990, they planted palm trees inside it. Without environmental strains to hamper the growth, these trees quickly grew straight and tall. Then, unexpectedly, they snapped in two. Apparently in the natural environment, stress from wind causes the wood fiber of palm trees to form strong, knurly, interconnected fibers. Without that strain, the fibers grew in isolated parallel strands that were unable to support the tree. 

These two examples from the natural world share a lesson – one that is also contained in the ancient wisdom of Buddhism. This philosophy of life uses the notion of karma to explain that the quality of one’s life depends on one’s choices together with the advantages or disadvantages from birth. True enough. 

 Experiences from early life are crucially important in determining the caliber of the future life of the adult. 

 I learned that lesson yearly teaching senior seminars at Hope College. Towards the end of the course, students shared life-view papers describing their values and beliefs. These were often deeply personal – reaching back into their childhood.  I often left those classes amazed and dismayed that seemingly similar students had such disparate life stories – some filled with trauma, others with kindness, love and opportunity. I was shaken because I realized that no matter how good life might be in the future, no matter how much love, kindness and opportunity, lives malnourished during childhood will forever bear the marks. 

And that is why I am a mentor with Kids Hope USA, an organization conceived by Virgil Gulker of Holland 25 years ago and now spread throughout the nation.  Forming partnerships between churches and schools, Kids Hope provides academic and relational mentoring to young at-risk children. With more than 1400 church-school partnerships reaching over 25,000 children, the leadership remains in West Michigan with the recent appointment of Karen Pearson of Holland as president.

Over the past twenty years I have mentored six children. One memorable moment was in 2014 when I met with a newly assigned first grader.  At our very first meeting he greeted me with two questions: Am I your only child? Will you be with me next year?  The first time we met!  What a testament to his acute need for a relationship. For the next four years, I’d come every Tuesday to find him with one eye watching the door, and leaping out of his seat when he saw me. 

My present child is not so effusive, but I see the fruits of our relationship as well. Recently the fifth grader pouted as he was prone to do when I didn’t give him the answers for his worksheet. Judging that our relationship had adequately deepened, I told him sternly, “Either stop that behavior, or I’m going home and you’re going back to class – it’s up to you.” His attitude changed instantly. I raised the bar for his behavior, and he rose to it.  Our relationship and his life will be the better for it.  

Having taught for almost forty years, I am convinced that the three crucial personal qualities needed for successful living are:  i) grit (perseverance), ii) imagination (creative thinking), and iii) people skills (ability to relate to, empathize with, and understand people).  Significantly, I can work on and see progress in all of these areas with my Kids Hope children.

Today while loading my groceries from the cart into my car at Meijer, it occurred to me that there are three kinds of people:  i) those who don’t return their cart to the cart corral, ii) those who bring back their own cart, and iii) those who bring back another cart as well. The world desperately needs more of this third type of person – those who are not satisfied with doing just what is required of them, but go the extra mile to leave the world a better place. The world needs them, and, more importantly, a child needs them.