About Youth ChalleNGe
We Support Second Chances
Nearly 33 million young Americans do not have a high school degree. Each year, 1.3 million more drop out of school and slip between the cracks. Many of those will end up incarcerated, unemployed, underemployed, or on federal assistance.
The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program is an evidence-based program designed to provide opportunities to adolescents who have dropped out of school but demonstrate a desire to improve their potential for successful and productive lives.
The ChalleNGe Program continues to be fiscally competitive with other federal as well as private programs with a mission to help disadvantaged youth. Empirical evidence shows the ChalleNGe Program to be the most cost-effective intervention reviewed for achievement in addressing the needs of at-risk youth. Recently, Promising Practices Network identified the ChalleNGe Program as a "proven" program.
Consider this:
It costs $27 per capita, per day for cadets to attend the ChalleNGe program as compared to other youth programs:
- $50 for High School
- $87 for Job Corps
- $117 for Juvenile Corrections
- $162 for Adult Corrections
- $178 for Private School
Today, 30% of high school dropouts are unemployed and 24% are on welfare. Over their lifetime, they could lose an estimated $900,000 in wages. An astonishing 68% of the prison population is made up of high school dropouts.
In 1993, the National Guard founded the Youth ChalleNGe Program to give troubled youth the opportunity to turn their lives around. A voluntary, preventive program, the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program (NGYCP) helps young people improve their life skills, education levels and employment potential. Sixteen- to 18-year-old male and female high school dropouts are eligible to apply for the 17-month program, which includes a five-month residential phase followed by a 12-month mentoring phase.
Led by professionals who emphasize structure, discipline, education and life skills, the Youth ChalleNGe Program provides high school dropouts the chance to become productive and accomplished in their chosen field. MDRC, a social policy research organization, recently concluded a multi-year evaluation of the Youth ChalleNGe Program and found it produces long-term positive effects in the lives of ChalleNGe graduates.
Authorized and funded through the Department of Defense, National Guard Bureau is responsible for management and oversight of the 34 ChalleNGe academies that have graduated more than 100,000 participants to date.
NGYCP is preventive rather than remedial, focusing on educating at-risk youth and becoming involved with them before crime becomes a lifestyle.
