Milwaukee-based Moore Oil has made a $30,000 donation to Youth Frontiers, the leading character education organization in the Upper Midwest, to hold comprehensive retreats with Milwaukee-area middle and high schools to help build a more respectful school culture and to help reduce bullying. The financial support will allow Youth Frontiers to reach 1,000 students on eight retreats next school year.
The donation will allow Youth Frontiers to bring its highly regarded character education retreats to several area schools.
“Moore Oil Company is committed to the character development of our young people in Milwaukee, and Youth Frontiers is the best in the Midwest at building positive schools communities where students can thrive socially, emotionally and academically,” said Scott Haag, chief executive officer of Moore Oil Company. “This partnership is critical to improving our schools’ cultures while creating the ethical citizens that our businesses need in the future.”
Youth Frontiers delivers programs that build positive school communities and strengthen student character in schools across the country. In middle schools, Youth Frontiers holds Courage Retreats, a student introduction to the value of moral courage. As students face the challenges of adolescence and peer pressure, acting with courage helps facilitate responsible decision-making in social and academic situations. The retreat helps students to identify the social fears that impede responsible decision-making, motivates students to act with courage in the face of these social fears, and then, to take healthy risks that will make a positive difference for themselves, for their peers, and in their school.
“We teach values unapologetically,” said Joe Cavanaugh,Youth Frontiers Founder and CEO. “Our mission is to change the way students treat each other in every hallway, lunch line and classroom of every school in America. We are not succeeding as a society if our children receive an ‘A’ in Math… and an ‘F’ in life.”
According to the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center, almost 30 percent of youth, more than 5.7 million, in the United States are estimated to be involved in bullying – as either a bully or as a target of bullying.
“For more than two decades, I’ve been listening to kids talk about physically threatening and emotionally scarring experiences at the hands of bullies,” Cavanaugh said. “At the same time, I have witnessed how strongly our youth respond to positive messages. I know from Youth Frontiers’ own quantitative assessments that positive messages create a catalyst for change in our schools. And, for a handful of students from each class, the retreat can be a transformative event.”
Youth Frontiers is currently reaching out to middle and high schools in the Milwaukee area that have a need and interest to have a retreat held in their schools at no cost. The retreats will take place during the 2012-2013 school year.
