Children with Parents in Prison

Children, innocent God sent gifts, suffer  the greatest brunt of incarceration when their parents are removed from their lives.  This part of End the Cycle addresses,  the unintended consequence of the ugliest, demonic, subhuman culture of  America’s greatest sin, PRISONS.  Here is how we, as a society, can at least be accountable for the irreversable damage that we have inflicted to God’s Treasurers.

One of the most helpless, empty feelings when one is in prison is knowing that your loved ones are on the outside, but all alone, without the help and support of their mom or dad.  But it is more chilling by those outside that do not have anywhere to turn to when they hit a road block, be it violence, health, education, and just the basics of the security of knowing that there is a paycheck on Friday to stretch it to make ends meet.  To talk about teaching how to manage a 401K is foreign to the vast majority of the population that face the dilemma day after day.

The greater portion of the prison population should not be incarcerated.  Yet reality sinks in when you are escorted from the court room doors to the confines of the US Marshall, and eventually, to the Bureau of Prisons.  So as a society we need to try to focus attention to this ugly part of our beloved America but also to deal as effectively as possible with the situation at hand, our parent-less children and spouse-less partners.

At End of Cycle we are both in and outside of many federal prisons throughout the United States.  Please visit the list of Managers the we at End of Cycle have and the locations where there is work taking place everyday.  Prisons are not meant for rehabilitation but are there to inflict discomfort in every aspect of prison life.  So it is one of End of Cycle’s to stay engaged and offer hope to the prisoner and also to the families that are “imprisoned” because of their loved ones situation.  We have gained the respect of all because we do not sugarcoat the ugliness of prison but at the same time, we offer sincerity in our relationships through hope, faith and trust.

End of Cycle is and 501(c)(3) non profit organization dedicated to ending the vicious cycle of drug abuse, alcoholism, incarceration and domestic violence in the life of our nations’ youth.  This is will be accomplished through education and practical application of methods that have been tried and proven over the years.

The opening passage is an excerpt from one of our books entitled “Somebody Please Open The Door”, this is a saga revolving around the life of a young girl named Cathy.  This is just a sample of our methods to reach our troubled youth.  Our youth of today are exposed to so much, ever changing propaganda, that any successful program will literally have to be extremely flexible as well as versatile.  You can’t expect a program designed for small community in Utah, to have the same affect on a community in the gangland war zone of the South side of Chicago.

This is what sets End of Cycle apart from most of your other mentoring groups and youth clubs.  We have the ability to cross all social, economic, geographical as well as educational boundaries.  We work in conjunction with several Government agencies such as DOJ, DCFS, HHS as well as a plethora of Faith Based organizations such as the Salvation Army to deliver the most results per dollar infused into our organization.

We mentor children and their parents (when possible), what since does it make to spend 12,000 dollars helping free a child from drugs only to send him back home to a war zone that was the cause of the substance abuse from the beginning.  We also do mass research into programs that are working in certain parts of the country.  We do this in order to see if the program can be implemented in other parts of the country after we apply some necessary changes of course.  This is done to facilitate the need to remember that you must take into account that different cultures view problems from a different perspective.

Another feature that set us apart is our ongoing affinity with JCP Productions.  They write most of our literature in conjunction with the current needs of today.  They have such a wide variety of writers from such  diversified demographics that it is very easy for them to take a book designed specifically for a Native American Tribe in South Dakota and make the same book applicable to a housing project in Detroit, Michigan.

Our overall objective is to create an avenue of choices for our youth. We believe that a lot of behavior is acquired through a series of bad choices.  If we can just show them that they do have a way out of their previous bad choices, and create a positive environment for them to grow and explore the positive side of life.  We call these places Centers of Refuge, it is literally a place to recluse from all the negative propaganda society is thrusting upon our youth.

This is all accomplished through our 3-point system developed by experts and people who have lived this life, we believe nothing is a better teacher than experience.  That is why we know it to be true for a fact that there is no such thing as a one size fits all cure for the problems and troubles that plague our youth today.  For example our youth are facing troubles that we never even thought about 20 years ago.  Sexting, bullying, internet predators, cyber bullying, gang wars and the like.  How can a person possibly think that there is one blanket to cover all these ills?

We have come up with a 3 phase plan to help try to curb all these issues facing our nation’s youth.  From the onset, we are not claiming a miracle cure, but we are trying to help find a cure.  It has been our experience that most of the things we create to cure a problem actually become part of the disease we are trying to cure, or the side effects from the cure is so bad it actually creates more of a sickness than the one we are trying to cure.

PHASE #1

IDENTIFYING THE CULPRIT:

This is the initial stage, as well as the most important aspect of any such program in which you are trying to attempt a massive exodus with.  We choose this verbiage very carefully, because most of the youth today don’t realize that they need to be rescued.  This is the main problem as we see it.  You can not rescue some one that don’t understand that they need to be rescued.

STAGE GOALS:

To get the youth to recognize that something is not right.  To help them learn to take honest self evaluation as well as get them to learn to evaluate their home environment as well as their social relationships.

SPECIFIC AIM:

To seek out the youth that are in the most danger of being consumed by a system that is suppose to be designed to help them, this can be accomplished through our contacts with local and federal organizations that deal with our youth on a daily basis: Schools, courts, clubs, sports organizations.

METHOD:

This is what sets End  of Cycle apart from most of your other organizations that are attempting to do what we are doing.  We have such a large network to choose from.  We not only mentor children, but we also have a special relationship with people that are incarcerated as well as the homeless and the children of these respective groups.  With the growing prison population in this country, this automatically gives us access to over 2.5 million youths.  Who, given the situation will have a high propensity to use drugs or alcohol.

We will use our expanded Faith Based network as well and this will give us an additional pool of youth to gather information from as well.  These numbers are off the chart.  With the proper funding we will begin the mass exodus of our youth by a simple interview and with the help of trained psychologist we will begin to put together a collection of data on what is really the problem with our youth.  This is will become very valuable in the future for generations, as well as become a data base in which we will collect information on families and the history of the youth.

In addition we are currently training approximately 50 to 75 youth to become our peer information collection agents.  Even though all information will be confidential and handled by trained psychologist, experience with the youth has taught us that youth of today are more apt to be honest with their peers as oppose to a counselor and somebody else.  Even if they know the counselor is trying to help them.  This is why we have developed a system to get honest answers from the youth we are trying to help.

We will then use all the collected data to determine which youth is high risk.  Then we will take the painstaking job of classifying which youth will need immediate help as oppose the those we can delay with treatment.  We must always put the overall welfare of the youth first.  This goes back to the rescue concept.  Some of our youth are on a rapid road to self-destruction and will get there sooner than others.  Example case:  Jill is a 16 year old High School Junior, she smokes a little pot on the weekends with her girl friends and watch funny movies.  Sherri is a 14 year old freshmen who has a 50 dollar a day meth habit.

Which one of these girls need help the most?  Our point exactly, this is why we will continue to say there is no blanket approach to this problem.  But with the right funding and the proper training and materials we can make a huge dent in the population of our youth that are on this negative skid to pain, prison and ultimately an early death.

This will take major networking to accomplish, simply because the problem is too large for any one organization, but with the right plan and focus, the youth will have to eventually make the decision as what they want to do.  The only issue is, presenting proper facts to the youth in order for them to have a better chance of avoiding drugs and making a better choice to help other youth.  We take this approach because of some of the most recent data we have received concerning the best way to change the direction of a person that is heading for destruction.  Recent studies have shown that if you give youth a seemingly important task of responsibility; they are more apt to fulfill their task.

If we take our most successful youth and then give the the responsibility of training and raising up other youth, we believe that we will have a higher success rate.  It has been proven over and over again that any age and social group receive more readily from a group of their peers as oppose to a social group they can’t identify with.  This way we are constantly renewing our staff as well as getting fresh and innovative ways of doing a much needed job for our youth and nation.

This also gives us a much needed advantage as to why most of our youth will even pick drugs in the future.  We at End of Cycle believe that our organization can deliver more result per dollar spent because of the fact that we have such a broad base of volunteers and this is something we have been doing directly and indirectly for the past 15 years.  There must be a specific point in which we can know when and if the programs are successful.

This is the stage where we develop our literature as well.  The youth will play a major role in how and what we write in order to help our youth make better choices.  They will help us develop programs that will meet their specific demographic needs.  Like we stated previously, all children needs are not the same.  We also realize that location and education, ethnicity, culture, age as well as a plethora of other factors will determine how and what program we implement to help a particular group of youth.

PHASE #2:

This is the most intricate part of the process.  This is the stage in which we examine, interview, and choose our mentors and the staff that will initially work with the youth we are going to help.

SPECIFIC AIM:

To make sure that we match the correct youth with the staff that will be able to give them the optimum potential to make a positive transition from substance abuse unto a life of freedom and usefulness in society.

METHOD OF APPLICATION:

This will be done through a tedious and strenuous process of selecting the top mentors and counselors as well as analyst from the cream of the crop.  The selection will come from most of your already successful organizations.  We need to bear in mind that the accepted norm for society is maybe 30 to 65 percent of people treated that they stay clean for a few years.  We believe that we can push that rate of success well into the 90 percentile bracket.

Most of our people will be selected in direct connection to the need of the youth that we are looking to help.  Too many times we try to match the youth up with the program.  But with this method of project building, the program is ever changing so it will not be a need to send a particular child to a foreign land to get them help.

We must make very careful background checks and have these people counseled, because it has been our experience that this program can very easily become a disease instead of a cure.  It can also lead to long term mental disorders if not carefully monitored by professional.

We at End of Cycle believe we have an advantage here simply because of all the organizations we are currently networking with.  For example with the Faith Based foundation it gives us automatic connections to nationwide geographics as well as unlimited social diversity.  We also have several other connections in the area of social services as well as in the Department of Justice.  This in turn will give us a stringent amount of materials to choose from in order to best help the youth we are trying to help.  The next advantage we have is that we are already mentoring children that are from “high” risk family situations.  We work with the children of prisoners, homeless people, children of substance abusers as well as survivors of domestic violence in the home.

It is essential that the staff that we select be indoctrinated with the concept that they must be able to read beneath the surface of the life of the youth.  They will be taught the signs of relapse, and the triggering mechanism that will lead back to usage of drugs.

FOUNDATION:

As I was preparing this proposal, I had the opportunity to hear great speaker talk about buildings and the process they went through to condemn a building.  He said that if the roof was gone, or the walls and doors were gone, they will not condemn a building.  But if the doors, roof, walls and everything else was in perfect condition, and the foundation was cracked, they condemn the building.  I listened to that and learned a very valuable lesson about what we are attempting to do for the youth of this great nation.

A program can have great ideas, great staff, great intentions, but if the foundation is weak the hold program will be condemned.  This is another thing that sets End of Cycle apart from all the existing programs and organizations.  Our foundation is actually our main strength.  We base our teachings, programs, and outreach on the fact that we have such superior literature, that our program will flourish with or without us being directly involved.  Our concepts can be adapted modified and taken to a remote village in a third world country and still be very successful.  Why?  Because of the strength of our foundation.  The passage that was read at the beginning of the proposal is from the “Chronicles of Cathy”.  Because of our unique relationship with our publishers we can take this series of books and make it fit any situation in any part of the country.  What is really extraordinary about End of Cycle, is that the literature can be ready for mass publishing in two weeks.  I challenge the funder to match this capability from any existing group receiving funding as of this date.

We are in on way putting down any other organization, but this is what we do.  We specialize in troubled children, so it is only natural that we would try to perfect our ability to help and reach these troubled youth.

Another advantage that End of Cycle enjoy, is the fact that we work with the parent or guardian of the youth.  We strongly believe that the home is the beginning of the healing process.  A child should not have to live in a war zone, or go to school in a war zone or do homework in a war zone.  That is why our staff will have extra training in order to discern if the child is having problems beyond the scope of what we can do for them.  This is what makes networking with other organizations an essential element.

PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT:

We will allow the chosen staff to work with our people to develop their own materials that they believe would be the most beneficial to their geographical locations.  The staff will feel more comfortable with teaching the child something they feel more comfortable with.  The youth are smarter than we give them credit for.  Just think back to when you were in school, you knew when the teacher was teaching you something they really didn’t believe.  Why?  Their words and demeanor lacked the conviction of someone telling you the truth.

This is a reason for the second phase of the program, we must be sure that our staff believe in our approach and ideology concerning the help of our youth.  Furthermore, the funding we are seeking will be beneficial in the long term help of our training staff as well.  The staff assisting the youth will be able to take their training and our literature and transcend to every other area of social work that they chose to endeavor.

At this point of the projected training stage we will want our staff to learn and help develop our literature for future youths.  We believe that this gives us an advantage over other programs again, because different teachers and mentors feel more comfortable with different materials.  We want to customize our program to best suite our mentors and staff as well.  This gives us the best chance for success.

PHASE #3:

This is where the rubber meets the road in the entire program at this stage we have all the ducks in a row.

FUNDING PURPOSE:

We are seeking funding to better provide a service of promoting positive youth development through substance abuse training and educating our youth on better decision making.

GOALS:

Our overall goal is to enlighten our youth to better ways of dealing with the everyday stress of growing up in a society that has rapidly changing values.  To help the youth choose what is best for all the involved parties.

SPECIFIC FUNDING OBJECTIVES:

To help us improve our already successful programs that deal with troubled youth and their families.  To help us meet the need of the youth and give them a peaceful place to socially recover from the pressures of being a youth.  To set up boundaries for the youth and show them the safety in establishing protective borders for themselves.

PROJECT AIM:

Our overall aim at this stage is to make sure the right mentor is aligned with the correct child to guide and help.  We want to then allow the mentor and staff to customize their literature and let us know what would be the be topics and scenario to write about in order to hold the youth’s attention so that we can help them.  We want to also evaluate our staff to make sure they are doing the best job possible for the youth they are assigned to help.

We already have several programs in operation and we are under the hospice of the Salvation Army, which have international acclaim as a great humanitarian organization with several boy clubs and several girl clubs.  They also offer a plethora of services to the community, from helping the homeless to helping released prisoners.  They have several rehab places in which we have at our disposal.  This gives us such a wide range of targets to help the youth, that funding will be critical with the ability for us to give the optimum care for the youth.

Also, with the proper funding this will help End the Cycle become an independent organization eventually.  Because of our ability to produce literature on demand, other organizations have already made pledges to buy literature from our team of writers and program designers.  This fit well with members of our Faith Based organizations.  It is our goal to become an asset to our community and not another failed program that could have worked if…….

To connect the right youth with the right staff mentors to help begin the mass exodus from social bondage of substance abuse and peer pressure, to a life of freedom and peace and wise choice making.  We want to do all that we can to ensure that our youth are given a fair chance to make the best of their lives.  The suicide rate substance, abuse rate, incarceration rate for our youth are at an all time high.  There is something definitely wrong in the nation.  We must be able to diagnose and treat it before it becomes an epidemic.

Our aim is to create the most effective plan from our data we collect from the youth, to best serve them.  We will use all the data we  have collected to shape and mold our existing programs into a program that will work and be easy to be received by our youth.  It has always been our position that a medicine is of no use if it cannot be ingested by the people it was designed to cure.  We will do all in our power to prevent our program from becoming a useless model that use to work.  We will continue to re-invent our materials and upgrade our staff with the latest information and teaching techniques.

With the proper funding we will take our program to a national and possibly international level of epic proportions.  We will make a significant impact in the lives of our youth.  We will  work closely with the funder to make sure that we are meeting the objectives of the grant writers.  Given the neccessary funds and right opportunities we believe that our program will be hard to beat, but easy to entreat, and we will welcome duplication and franchising of our concepts.